Closing Time

Galway, a rainy Thursday · the town library at a quarter to eight · an old parish map and an empty chair · Difficulty: Officer 3 · 6×6

Galway, the city library, a rainy Thursday evening. Vincent, a retired teacher and local historian, was copying old maps in the Local History Room and noticed that one map was missing from his folder. Six people were in the library before closing. Vincent was found dead. The map never turned up.

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 counter, the table, the lamp, the bookcases, the globe, the dollhouse and the desk) cannot be occupied; the armchair, the chairs and the beanbag 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 was a woman, in any column; “the northernmost person in her area” = nobody else in her area was in a row further up.
The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area. The victim made no statement – his square, too, follows from the others’.

Statements

Ailbhe (head librarian): She was beside a bookcase.
Bronagh (librarian): She was beside the lamp. She was alone in her area.
Cillian (caretaker): Exactly one row north of him was a female reader. The beanbag was somewhere in his column.
Declan (reader): The globe was somewhere in his row.
Eimear (student): The desk was somewhere in her area.
Vincent (local historian): The victim. He was alone with the murderer.

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