The Monastery

Saint Odo’s Abbey · compline · candlelight · Difficulty: Inspector 8 · 12×12

Compline at Saint Odo’s Abbey, the last prayer of the day. The rooms are lit only by the candles everyone carries – and when the bell falls silent, Vitalis, the abbot, is found dead in the Chapter House. Eleven people were inside the walls: five monks, three pilgrims and three guests. One of them is the killer. Read every statement, find everyone’s square on the plan and unmask the murderer – alone with Vitalis in the Chapter House, seen by no one.

Rules

1. Candlelight: everyone could see exactly two squares in every direction – the 5×5 block around their own square; the open arches and doorways mean that area borders do not block the view. “I saw two people” counts the others inside that block (people in the same row or column never stand inside it, of course).
2. Nobody saw the murderer: apart from the victim, no one was within two squares of the murderer.
3. Every row and every column holds exactly one person. As soon as you place someone, cross out their whole row and column.
4. “Beside” = directly left, right, above or below, and in the same area. Squares with objects (the altar, desks, tables, pillars, the well…) cannot be occupied; the benches, the stools and the beds can. A corner of an area is a square of that area with two outer sides.
5. 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 is a woman, in any column; “north of Basil” = in a row further up, in any column.
6. The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area.

Statements

• Aron (cellarer): He saw Gunilla. He was in the Cloister.
• Basil (sacristan): He was beside a bench. Exactly one row north of him was a male guest.
• Cyrus (copyist): Exactly one row north of him was a monk.
• Damian (gardener): He was in a corner of his area. Exactly two rows north of him was a man.
• Ephraim (cook): He was beside a bench. He was not in a corner of his area.
• Flavia (pilgrim): She was in the Gatehouse. She saw Damian.
• Gunilla (pilgrim): She was south of Cyrus.
• Hortensia (pilgrim): She was beside a bed.
• Ines (merchant’s widow): She was beside a table.
• Judith (noblewoman): She was in a corner of her area. Exactly one row north of her was a pilgrim.
• Konrad (travelling knight): He was beside a lectern.
• Vitalis (abbot): The victim. He was found in the Chapter House – alone with the murderer.

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