The Last Appointment

Seville, Friday evening · a hair salon near the Alameda · the last client of the week and an unpaid order · Difficulty: Officer 3 · 6×6

Salon Alicia has been cutting and colouring hair for twenty years, and on Friday evening it is full. Valentín, a sales rep for a hair-care company, came to collect the price of three months of shampoo – and told everyone that the order book did not match the stock on the shelves. At nine the shutter came down, and he vanished. Six people were in the salon. Valentín was found dead. He never took the next order.

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 counter, the coat rack, the mirror, the sinks, the locker, the potted plant, the trolley and the dressing table) cannot be occupied; the barber chairs, the sofa, the armchair and the stool can.
3. 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.
4. 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

• Alicia (salon owner): She was the only one beside the counter.
• Blanca (stylist): There was no man in her area.
• Cosme (colourist): The mirror was somewhere in his column. A sink was somewhere in his row.
• Domingo (client): Exactly one row north of him was somebody beside the trolley.
• Elvira (client): She was not in a corner of her area. A barber chair was somewhere in her area.
• Valentín (sales rep): The victim. He was alone with the murderer.

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