High Tide

Morwen Island, Cornwall · the night of the spring tide, October 1898 · how far had the sea come in? · Difficulty: Inspector 8 · 12×12

Morwen Island lies off the Cornish coast; at low water a causeway joins it to the mainland. To the south the foreshore runs down to the sea in four strips: nearest the water the Sandbar, then the Mussel Beds, then the Wrack Line, and highest up the Shingle below the Net Sheds. On the night of the October spring tide Vanora, who kept the island’s only inn, was found dead in the Herb Garden. The causeway was already under water, so the murderer was one of the eleven people out on the island that evening: six islanders and five guests of the inn. Nobody could say afterwards how far the tide had come in – only that whoever was out on a flooded strip had been sitting in a boat. Who killed Vanora?

Rules

1. The tide had flooded the strips of the foreshore one after another, starting from the sea, but nobody knows how many.
2. On a flooded strip people were only in boats; on a strip left dry the boats were empty.
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, the candelabra, the fireplace, the tables, the barrels, the well, the water trough, the apple trees, the herb beds, the flower bed, the net racks, the coil of rope, the lighthouse, the telescope, the rocks, the clumps of seaweed, the bollard and the anchor) cannot be occupied; the benches, the bar stools, the hay bales and the boats can. Two objects are the same kind of thing only when they have the same picture.

Statements

• Annick (the fishwife): She was on the Mussel Beds.
• Briac (the ferryman): He was in a corner of his area.
• Cerys (the shepherdess): She was in a boat.
• Donan (the sexton): He was not beside a hay bale. Somebody else in his area was beside an apple tree.
• Elowen (the net mender): She was the only woman beside a boat.
• Fingal (the lighthouse keeper): A bench was somewhere in his area. He and Vanora were beside the same kind of thing.
• Gwilym (a painter): He was beside a clump of seaweed.
• Hanne (a birdwatcher): She was in a corner of her area. A boat was somewhere in her row.
• Isidor (an antiques dealer): He was on the Shingle. A barrel was somewhere in his column.
• Juliette (a schoolteacher): She was alone in her area.
• Kester (a surveyor): He was beside a bench that nobody was sitting on. He was right beside an area where nobody was.
• Vanora (the innkeeper): The victim. She was found in the Herb Garden – alone with the murderer.

← Cases