The Mirror Gallery

Monte Titano · a reception at dusk · nobody saw the murderer, not even in a mirror · Difficulty: Inspector 8 · 10×10

Viviana, owner of an old palazzo high on Monte Titano, gave a reception at dusk: a harp and a piano, and the candlelight doubled and redoubled by a gallery of mirrors. When the music paused, the hostess was nowhere to be seen – a little later she was found dead. In that house everybody had been watching everybody else, if only in a mirror.

Rules

1. Everyone looked along their own row and column, in all four directions. A sightline passes over empty squares (the armchairs, the sofa, the bench, the pouf, the chaise longue and the carpet included), is turned by 90° at every mirror, and stops at any other object or at the outer wall of the palazzo.
2. Seeing is mutual, and nobody blocks a view: everybody on a sightline is seen, also behind someone else.
3. Nobody saw the murderer: no other suspect was on the murderer’s sightlines – not even in a mirror.
4. Every row and every column holds exactly one person. As soon as you place someone, cross out their whole row and column.
5. “Beside” = directly left, right, above or below, and in the same area. The rooms of the palazzo open into one another: the dashed lines are the borders of the areas. Squares with an object (the mirrors, the bookcase, the pillars, the statues, the candelabra, the harp, the piano, the potted plant, the clock, the painting) cannot be occupied; the armchairs, the sofa, the bench, the pouf, the chaise longue and the carpet can.
6. “The pouf was somewhere in his row” = the pouf is on one of the squares of his row, in any area; “an armchair was somewhere in her area” = on a square of the area she was in.
7. The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area.

Statements

• Ambra (jeweller): She saw nobody.
• Bartolomeo (notary): He was in the Ballroom.
• Cristina (art dealer): An armchair was somewhere in her area. She and Gabriele were each beside the same kind of object.
• Davide (banker): He was the only man beside the pouf. He saw exactly two people – both of the household.
• Eleonora (harpist): Somebody else in her area was beside the carpet.
• Federico (pianist): He saw nobody. There was exactly one other person in his area.
• Gabriele (majordomo): He saw Viviana. He was not in the Anteroom.
• Hermes (waiter): The pouf was somewhere in his row.
• Ilenia (housemaid): The chaise longue was somewhere in her row.
• Viviana (owner of the palazzo): The victim. She was found in the Library – alone with the murderer.

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