The Globe

Bankside · 21 September 1599 · Caesar's ghost missed his cue · Difficulty: Detective 5 · 8×8

Bankside, 21 September 1599. The company’s new playhouse – a round wooden O raised from the timbers of their old theatre – was packed for the performance of Julius Caesar. In the fourth act Caesar’s ghost should have appeared before Brutus, but nobody stepped out from behind the curtain: Val, who played Caesar, was found dead in the Tiring House. The company’s only prompt copy had vanished too.

Rules

1. Every row and every column holds exactly one person. As soon as you place someone, cross out their whole row and column.
2. “Beside” = directly left, right, above or below, and in the same area. Squares with objects (the staircases, the coat rack, the curtain, the chest, the trapdoor, the pillars, the money boxes, the barrel and the orange basket) cannot be occupied; the benches, the throne and the stools can.
3. The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area.

Statements

• Abraham (player of Brutus): He was the only man beside a stool.
• Barnaby (boy player – Portia, and Lucius in the fourth act): There was a spectator in his area. The curtain was somewhere in his column.
• Christopher (book-keeper – the prompter, keeper of the play-book): The barrel was not in his area.
• Damaris (gatherer – takes the pennies at the door): There was exactly one other person in her area.
• Ellen (orange-seller): She was not on the Stage.
• Frances (a merchant's wife): She was the only one sitting on a bench. There was no man in her area.
• Gervase (a young gallant): He was the only man beside the trapdoor. He was beside a pillar.
• Val (player of Julius Caesar): The victim. He was found in the Tiring House, beside the coat rack – alone with the murderer.

← Cases