Where did the seventh chair go?

A short mystery. The way to the answer runs through a puzzle.

Swipe.

The Seventh Chair

Mrs Pike works at the theatre in winter, since the river boat closes from November. Her counter stands right by the door to the orchestra pit, so she hears everything the musicians say — and during the interval, the musicians say a lot.

The seventh chair is the best seat in the pit. Not because it's comfortable — none of them are — but because it's the only one that doesn't creak. The other six creak, and the creak carries straight into the microphones.

Before Wednesday's dress rehearsal, the seventh chair wasn't in its place.

"Someone's taken it," said Walter, the cellist, leaning on the counter.

There's only one door out of the pit, and it's right by Mrs Pike's counter. She'd been standing there since eight that morning. Nobody carried a chair past her. She'd swear to it, if it came to that. It won't.

Four people had been down in the pit that morning.

Walter, who always claims the seventh chair for rehearsal, and who is now missing it the loudest.

Alex, the lighting technician, who sets the footlights in the pit each morning, and who asks Mrs Pike, every single time, whether she'd fancy the Richmond regatta with him one Saturday — there's a bar tent there too, only this time she wouldn't have to stand behind it.

Jack, the young stagehand, who carries the furniture during rehearsals, and who went down to the pit twice that morning.

Miss Hartley, the conductor's assistant, who speaks to no one, and who spends her time straightening the music stands.

Mrs Pike didn't call the caretaker. She thought instead. A chair doesn't vanish. A chair is only not where people are looking for it.

Fill in the sudoku

Tap an empty square first, then tap a number.

Nine squares in the grid are grey. The numbers in them turn into letters using the table below, read top to bottom, left to right across each row. As soon as a grey square gets the right number, its letter appears by itself in the nine empty boxes under the table. If no letter appears, the number is wrong.

The Seventh Chair – continued

The pit isn't only reached by that one door. There's a low opening under the stage that the stagehands use, wide enough to pass a chair through with ease.

Jack had carried it up — one of the dining chairs downstage had broken a leg before the third-act dinner scene, and they needed a replacement fast. He chose the seventh chair for exactly the reason the musicians love it: it doesn't creak. In a solemn dinner scene, a creaking chair would ruin everything.

The chair stood downstage for forty minutes, under the tablecloth, in plain view of everyone, while the orchestra rehearsed the whole act. Everyone looked at it. Nobody recognised it.

Mrs Pike told Walter where to find it. He went up, brought it down, and has kept it with him at the bar ever since, so nobody can borrow it again.

Alex concluded from all this that Mrs Pike was a thoughtful woman — and, as it happens, a very handsome one. Mrs Pike concluded that there wasn't just one door. There were two.

In the dressing room, the actress insists the mirror slipped lower overnight. The mirror never moved.