The Tea Garden

A tea garden in Kyoto · cherry-blossom week · the kettle kept singing · Difficulty: Detective 5 · 7×7

Kyoto, the first week of April, when the cherry trees of the old tea garden bloom for a few days only. The tea master's family had invited a small circle of artists to a tea ceremony – and an American collector who had come to buy the garden's famous tea bowl. While the guests strolled across the bridge over the koi pond and the gardener raked the stone garden, the kettle kept singing in the tea house. There, on the tatami beside it, lay Virginia, the collector. Each of them describes where they were – find the one who was alone with her.

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 kettle, the stone lanterns, the pond, the rocks and the cherry trees) cannot be occupied; the benches, the tatami mats and the bridge 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 is a woman, in any column.
4. The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area.

Statements

• Akiko (the tea master's daughter): She was beside the pond.
• Benjiro (the gardener): He was not in a corner of his area.
• Chiyo (a haiku poet): A stone lantern was somewhere in her area. Exactly one row north of her was a woman.
• Daisuke (a calligrapher): A rock was somewhere in his row. He was beside the pond.
• Emi (a kimono designer): A cherry tree was somewhere in her row. She was the only woman beside a bench.
• Fumio (an art dealer from Osaka): He was not alone in his area.
• Virginia (an American art collector): The victim. She was found in the Tea House, beside the kettle – alone with the murderer.

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