Sixteen Rooms

Baroque palace · after the masked ball · sixteen chambers – and one of them stayed empty · Difficulty: Chief 10 · 16×16

After the masked ball the princely family, their guests and the household of Palais Rosenau withdrew to the piano nobile: sixteen chambers that open into one another, without a single corridor. Even on that night the old dowager princess Violante insisted on her rule – after midnight everyone keeps to a chamber of their own. One person broke it. At dawn Violante was found dead in the Great Hall, beside a fireplace, and the chamber her murderer should have kept to had stood empty all night. Everybody tells you where they were, and nobody lies. Find out who was in which chamber – and who was alone with Violante.

Rules

Every chamber held at most one person, except the victim’s chamber.
“Sitting” = on a chair, in an armchair, on a bench, on the sofa, on the chaise longue, on the pouf or on the throne.
Every row and every column holds exactly one person. As soon as you place someone, cross out their whole row and column.
“Beside” = directly left, right, above or below, and in the same area. Squares with objects (the paintings, the candelabras, the statues, the fireplaces, the cabinets, the bookcases, the harpsichord, the billiard table…) cannot be occupied; the chairs, the armchairs, the benches, the sofa, the chaise longue, the pouf, the throne, the beds, the carpet and the rocking horse can. A corner of an area is a square of it that faces outwards (another area or the edge of the board) on a horizontal and on a vertical side.
Directions refer to rows and columns, not to the same line: “exactly two rows south of him was a woman” = the person in the second row below his is a woman, in any column; “south of Isabella” = in a row below hers. Two people are on the same diagonal when they are as many rows apart as columns.
The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area.

Statements

Aloysia (the prince’s wife): She was in the Audience Chamber. She was beside a painting.
Bonifaz (the reigning prince): He was sitting in a chair. He was south of Isabella.
Crescentia (the prince’s sister, a canoness): She was not sitting.
Desiderius (the prince’s brother, a cavalry officer): A painting was somewhere in his area. Exactly two rows south of him was a woman.
Eleonore (Violante’s granddaughter): She was the only woman sitting in a chair.
Fortunata (Italian prima donna): She was not beside a cabinet. A cabinet was somewhere in her area.
Giacomo (Venetian adventurer): He was not sitting. A bookcase was somewhere in his column.
Hieronymus (court physician): A chest was somewhere in his column.
Isabella (Spanish countess): A cabinet was somewhere in her row. There was no armchair in her area.
Joachim (court painter): He was the only man beside a chair.
Kajetan (majordomo): He was sitting. A chair was somewhere in his area.
Lisette (lady’s maid): A mirror was somewhere in her area. She and Eleonore were on the same diagonal.
Melchior (Violante’s private secretary): A candelabra was somewhere in his area. A statue was somewhere in his column.
Notburga (housekeeper): She was in the Bedchamber. She was not in a corner of her area.
Ottokar (footman): A bed was somewhere in his column.
Violante (the dowager princess): The victim. She was found in the Great Hall, beside a fireplace – alone with the murderer.

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