Scenedoku

Crime-scene logic cases

The Last Chapter

Ashcombe, Saturday closing time · a second-hand bookshop in a crooked town house · the book scout never left · Difficulty: Officer 4 · 8×8

For sixty years Hollins & Daughter has sold antiquarian books from a crooked-walled old house in Ashcombe. At half past five the bell rang for the last time and the owner bolted the street door – the bag of Vicky, the book scout, was still beside the counter, but Vicky was nowhere to be found. Eight people were in the shop. Vicky was found dead. The last chapter was left out.

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 bookcases, the counter, the book trolley, the globe, the map table, the chest, the lamp, the clock, the fireplace, the potted plant, the ladder, the staircase, the desk, the kettle, the flower bed, the apple tree and the sundial) cannot be occupied; the stool, the armchairs, the sofa, the rocking horse, the beanbag and the bench 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 – her square, too, follows from the others’.

Statements

  • Alison (owner): The ladder was somewhere in her area. The beanbag was somewhere in her row.
  • Ben (the owner’s nephew, Saturday assistant): The sundial was somewhere in his column.
  • Charlie (bookbinder): Exactly two rows south of him was a woman. A bookcase was somewhere in his area.
  • Daphne (retired schoolteacher): She was not in a corner of her area. She was the only one beside the rocking horse.
  • Eustace (collector of old maps): He was right beside an area where nobody was.
  • Frederick (book dealer from London): He was in the Poetry Corner.
  • Gillian (crime novelist): The chest was somewhere in her area. She was not beside the globe.
  • Vicky (book scout): The victim. She was alone with the murderer.

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