The House on Alberta Street

Alberta iela, Riga · spring 1905 · two floors on one plan · Difficulty: Inspector 7 · 10×10

Riga, spring 1905. On Alberta Street the architect Augusts shows his friends the new Jugendstil house he built for his wife’s aunt, Velta – stucco faces, tall windows, a staircase like a vine. Late in the evening Velta is found dead in the Atelier upstairs. The plan shows both floors: the upper floor on top, the ground floor below.

Rules

1. Two floors: rows 1–5 are the upper floor, rows 6–10 the ground floor, and every upstairs room lies directly above the ground-floor room with the same outline.
2. The upstairs–ground-floor pairs: Landing – Entrance Hall, Atelier – Salon, Bedroom – Dining Room, Maid’s Room – Kitchen.
3. The Salon was not empty: whoever was there heard the fall.
4. Every row and every column holds exactly one person – the rows and columns run through both floors. As soon as you place someone, cross out their whole row and column.
5. “Beside” = directly left, right, above or below on the plan, and in the same area. Squares with objects (the staircases, the potted plant, the desk, the statue, the painting, the dressing table, the wardrobe, the sewing machine, the chest, the coat rack, the piano, the tile stoves, the gramophone, the dining table, the cabinet, the kitchen range, the sink, the barrel) cannot be occupied; the benches, the stool, the beds, the sofa and the chairs can. The piano, each bed and the dining table cover two squares and count as one object each.
6. “The barrel was somewhere in his column” = the barrel is on one of the squares of his column, in any area and on either floor; the same goes for rows, and “somewhere in his area” = on a square of the area he was in.
7. “Sitting on a chair” = on a chair square (the same goes for the beds, the benches, the sofa and the stool). “Alone with the only person sitting on a chair” = exactly one person sat on a chair, and those two were alone in their area. “Alone with a man” = exactly one other person was in her area, a man.
8. The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area.

Statements

• Augusts (architect, the host): The barrel was somewhere in his column.
• Brigita (piano teacher): She was in the last column. Somebody else in her area was beside the cabinet.
• Cecīlija (art student): Brigita was in the room below hers.
• Dāvis (painter): He was alone with the only person sitting on a chair.
• Edgars (poet): He was not in the Atelier. He was sitting on a bed, a bench, a chair, the sofa or the stool.
• Filips (photographer): A bed was somewhere in his column.
• Gita (opera singer): The gramophone was somewhere in her row. She was alone with a man.
• Helēna (housemaid): Ivars was in the room below hers.
• Ivars (caretaker): He was not beside the barrel. The barrel was somewhere in his area.
• Velta (owner of the house): The victim. She was found in the Atelier – alone with the murderer.

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