The Bicycle Workshop

A bicycle workshop · a spring Saturday · the owner never came back from the storeroom · Difficulty: Officer 4 · 8×8

On the first warm Saturday of spring the Bicycle Workshop was full from the moment it opened: everybody wanted their bike ready for the season. Veerle, the owner, ran between the counter and the workshop, while her three employees patched tyres, adjusted gears and sold bells. Four customers were waiting their turn, some of them for the second hour. At some point Veerle went into the storeroom to fetch a spare part – and when Anneke went looking for her half an hour later, she found her dead among the crates. The police questioned the three employees and the four customers; each of them said where they had been when the owner disappeared.

Rules

Every row and every column holds exactly one person. As soon as you place someone, cross out their whole row and column.
“Beside” = directly left, right, above or below, and in the same area. Squares with objects (the bicycles, the counter, the trees, the desk, the shelf, the crates, the stepladder, the coat rack, the handcart and the planter) cannot be occupied; the stools and the bench can.
Directions refer to rows and columns, not to the same line: “exactly one row north of him was a woman” = the person in the row directly above is a woman, in any column.
The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area.

Statements

Anneke (shop assistant): She was in the Office. Exactly one row south of her was a woman.
Boudewijn (mechanic): He was the only man sitting on a stool.
Carlijn (apprentice mechanic): She was in the first column.
Dirk (a courier collecting his bike): He was not with Floris.
Esmee (a student with a flat tyre): She was not alone in her area.
Floris (a racing cyclist): The handcart was somewhere in his column. Another man in his area was sitting on the bench.
Gijs (a pensioner buying a new bell): Somebody else in his area was beside a tree. A crate was somewhere in his row.
Veerle (owner of the workshop): The victim. She was found in the Storeroom, beside a crate – alone with the murderer.

← Cases