Chronicle of the solution: The Spy of the Treasury
Poisoning Tier I
The poisoning file is closed. What remains is the part worth learning: how one got from an upturned cup to a name.
The opening of the investigation
Someone slipped poison where it did not belong, and now the whole court eyes its goblets warily. Whoever poured it knew the habits of the table; that narrows the circle more than we would like. The testimonies keep returning to the same names: Grigore the Cupbearer, Balasa the Seamstress and Brother Anselm. The places named in the testimonies — the watchtower, the tourney field and the customs cellar — each await their turn under scrutiny. Open the grid, weigh every clue, and pronounce your verdict: the Chancellery awaits only your signature.
The dossier opened with Grigore the Cupbearer, Balasa the Seamstress and Brother Anselm — a short list, as the Chancellery likes them, because short means it can be finished.
The suspects
-
Grigore the Cupbearer
He tastes the king's wine before anyone else. A trade with a short future, he says, but a rich past.
1.70 m tall · brown eyes · chestnut hair · right-handed
-
Balasa the Seamstress
She sews the garments of all the nobility and knows everyone's measurements - including those that do not show.
1.59 m tall · blue eyes · red hair · left-handed
-
Brother Anselm
He has copied manuscripts for forty years. He knows what every one of them says - including the forbidden ones.
1.75 m tall · brown eyes · greying hair · right-handed
Locations
-
The watchtower
The highest point of the fortress. From here you see everything - and from below, everyone sees who climbs up.
-
The tourney field
Empty stands outside festival days. An excellent place for meetings that never happened.
-
The customs cellar
Sealed crates, thick ledgers, and air that smells of undeclared goods.
The evidence gathered on file
Here is the whole file, as the investigator received it. Not one row is spare — it was checked by removing each in turn and watching the unique solution disappear.
- In the Chancellery's ledger it stands in black and white: Brother Anselm was at the customs cellar.
- The chronicler notes drily: the suspect with red hair was in the place from which you see everything, whatever the court may say.
- About the culprit, the Chancellery knows one thing for certain: the culprit was in the place with stands empty outside festival days.
Break the seal: the Chancellery's reasoning — warning: past this line, the mystery ends
How the circle closed
The investigation ran contrary to suspicion: it did not ask who could have, it cut away, row by row, whoever could not.
The Chancellery asked for one more check, and received it: “In the Chancellery's ledger it stands in black and white: Brother Anselm was at the customs cellar”. From then on that cell could no longer be disputed, and the dispute moved one row down.
It was set down, for whoever reads after us: “The chronicler notes drily: the suspect with red hair was in the place from which you see everything, whatever the court may say”. Two names bound themselves for good, and the binding undid, at a stroke, every pairing that contradicted it.
A witness of good faith cleared up one more corner: “About the culprit, the Chancellery knows one thing for certain: the culprit was in the place with stands empty outside festival days”. The line names nobody, but it binds the culprit to a fact — and every suspect who cannot carry it leaves the circle.
The verdict
The Chancellery pronounced its verdict without hesitation: the culprit is Grigore the Cupbearer. At the hour in question, Grigore the Cupbearer was at the tourney field. Nothing was assumed along the way; every step can be redone with a pencil on paper.
What became of the others
The others found their acquittal in the grid as well: Balasa the Seamstress was at the watchtower; Brother Anselm was at the customs cellar. It is these acquittals that made the verdict possible: without them, room for doubt would have remained.
Here the chronicle stops. If you followed it to the end, you did exactly what an investigator does: you believed the grid, not your impressions.
Play this dossier All mysteries
Nothing in this chronicle is invented: the text rises out of the dossier's logic, and the dossier passed through the solver before publication, so that its solution is provably unique. behind the scenes at the Chancellery.