The Café Bills

Grand café · a summer evening in 1905 · the bills tell who sat where · Difficulty: Chief 9 · 16×16

On a summer evening in 1905 the Grand Café Korona looked as it always did: regulars at the marble tables, visitors from out of town, waiters gliding between them. Viktória, the most feared theatre critic in town, finished her coffee and went to the back of the house – and was found in the Pantry, beside a barrel. The head waiter had the doors locked and laid the evening’s bills on the counter: one for each of the eight guest rooms, none for the service rooms. Everybody remembers to the last crown what they consumed, and everybody has said where they were. The bills do not lie: work out who was in which room – and who was alone with Viktória.

Rules

The bills: every card shows how many crowns (K) that person consumed – the staff consumed nothing –, and the bill beside the name of a room is the total consumption of the people who were in that room. A room without a bill can hold any amount.
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 (tables, pillars, palms, the piano, the counter, the billiard tables…) cannot be occupied; the chairs, the armchairs, the benches, the sofas and the bar stools can. A corner of an area is a square of that area that borders the outside (another area or the edge of the board) on one horizontal and one vertical side.
Directions refer to rows and columns, not to the same line: “exactly one row north of him was a man” = the person in the row directly above is a man, in any column; “south of Viktória” = in a row below hers.
The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area.

Statements

Antónia (poet): An armchair was somewhere in her column.
Bertalan (journalist): Exactly one row north of him was a man. An armchair was somewhere in his column.
Cecília (actress): She was in a corner of her area.
Demeter (playwright): He was not alone in his area.
Elemér (painter): He was sitting on an armchair or a chair.
Franciska (governess): There was a woman in her area. She was sitting on a seat (an armchair, a bench, a chair, a sofa or a bar stool).
Gusztáv (grain merchant): He was south of Viktória. He was the only man beside a card table.
Hermina (seamstress): She was in the Reading Room.
Izidor (lawyer): He was beside a chair.
Janka (student): She was in a corner of her area.
Kálmán (head waiter): He was in the Billiard Room.
Lujza (cashier): She was alone in her area.
Móric (waiter): He and Elemér were beside the same kind of thing. A round table was somewhere in his row.
Nelli (cloakroom attendant): A bench was somewhere in her area.
Oszkár (cook): A shelf was somewhere in his area.
Viktória (theatre critic): The victim. She was found in the Pantry, beside a barrel – alone with the murderer.

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