On the Threshold

Villa · New Year’s Eve · on a threshold you are in two rooms at once · Difficulty: Chief 10 · 16×16

New Year’s Eve at the Hollós villa. The main walls of the old house are so thick that a doorway is a small place of its own: whoever lingers on a threshold can talk into two rooms at once – and all evening somebody did. At midnight, on the threshold of the new year, the glasses were raised, but Vencel, the host, did not come to the toast: he lay dead in his Study, beside the desk. Everybody says where they were and who was with them, and nobody lies. Yet an honest sentence can be the best alibi of all, if it was said by somebody in a doorway. Find out where everybody was – and who was alone with Vencel.

Rules

On the threshold: whoever was on a threshold was present in both adjacent rooms.
Two rooms, one area: for a person on a threshold the two rooms together are their area.
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 (tables, fireplaces, cabinets, the piano, the billiard table…) and the solid squares of the four thick main walls cannot be occupied; the chairs, the armchairs, the benches, the sofa, the bed, the carpet and the thresholds – the doorways of the main walls – can. A corner of an area is a square of it that faces outwards (another area, a wall 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 one row north of her was a man” = the person in the row directly above is a man, in any column; “south of Cintia” = in a row below hers.
The murderer was alone with the victim: nobody else was in that area.

Statements

Aladár (the host’s brother): He was alone with a woman. He was beside an armchair.
Borbála (the host’s wife): The suit of armour was somewhere in her row. Exactly one row north of her was a member of the family.
Cintia (the host’s daughter): She was in the Ballroom. There was no man in her area.
Dénes (the host’s son-in-law): The gramophone was somewhere in his column.
Emőke (actress): She was sitting in a chair. She was not in a corner of her area.
Ferenc (the host’s business partner): He was in the Salon. There was a woman in his area.
Gizella (neighbour): She was beside a table. Of the people in her area, exactly one was a man.
Henrik (family doctor): A cabinet was somewhere in his row.
Irmgard (pianist): The champagne tower was somewhere in her row. She was south of Cintia.
János (lawyer): There were exactly two other people in his area. Somebody in his area was beside the billiard table.
Kinga (journalist): There was exactly one other person in her area.
Lenke (housekeeper): A cabinet was somewhere in her column.
Márton (cook): A woman in his area was on a threshold. A chair was somewhere in his row.
Nándor (chauffeur): An armchair was somewhere in his area.
Oksana (maid): The fountain was somewhere in her row. Exactly one row south of her was a man.
Vencel (the host): The victim. He was found in the Study, beside the desk – alone with the murderer.

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