THE CASE OF THE GREAT TRAIN MURDER

    Cory Groaner walked onto the platform and scanned the length of
the train. 
    The Orient Local had never been as classy as the Orient Express.
Nowadays, it was just a decrepit piece of junk held together by spit
and baling wire. It made every local stop between Paris and Istanbul
and was only for the extremely patient or the extremely broke. Cory
was both. As a disgraced Interpol agent, he was going nowhere and
not in any particular rush to get there.
    "Hello, Groaner."
    Cory glanced up to see a familiar looking conductor examining
his ticket. "Don't you recognize me?" the man asked with an evil
smile. "I'm Tim Barstool. Two years ago, I was half-owner in an
export firm. That was before my partner paid you to falsify records
and get my export license revoked."
    "Ah, yes. Barstool." Groaner barely remembered. "Well, it's good
to see you working again. No hard feelings?"
    "Of course not," Tim purred and ushered him onboard. 
    Groaner edged his way down the narrow corridor that lined the
train's private compartments. An attractive woman was just
maneuvering her luggage into an empty compartment. She bore an
uncanny resemblance to-- Oh, no! 
    "Hi, Cory."
    Bullseye Aim had once been on rather intimate terms with
Groaner, though not entirely by choice. They met years ago when he
was compiling data on international bank fraud. Aim thought it
might be a good idea if he left her names out of the reports.
Groaner thought it might be a good idea to spend weekends together
at a Paris hotel. Everything came to an abrupt halt five years ago
when Cory felt he could no longer hide Aim's criminal behavior.
    "So," Cory stammered. "Out of prison already?" 
    "Good behavior," Aim said icily and swept inside. 
    Before Cory could reach the sanctuary of his own compartment,
there was one more old acquaintance waiting. Sir Near Far
stood by an open corridor window, trying to decide which smelled
worse, the train fumes or the train upholstery. "Why, if it isn't
Groaner?" he said, his eyes meeting Cory's.
    As a con artist of the highest caliber, Sir Near had been in
the Interpol files for decades. One of Cory's few real achievements
had been to spearhead Far's capture and conviction. "Out on good
behavior?" Cory asked weakly.
    "Out on a jail break." Cory couldn't tell if he was joking or
not. 
    The murder was discovered by a second conductor an a lonely
station just west of Venice. Inspector Testarosa arrived on the
scene and determined the salient facts.
    "We've narrowed down the time of death," he said, referring to
his notes. "There's a particularly bad section of track they just
passed over. Half an hour of the roughest ride you'll ever
experience on a train. It had to be sometime during this section
that Cory Groaner was attacked with a savagely sharp ticket punch."
    "That's my ticket punch," Tim Barstool admitted. "I left my
jacket hanging on a corridor hook. Someone must have lifted it from
the pocket." Tim saw their gaze drift to a gash on his right
wrist. "During the time in question, I was in the toilet, having a
little drink. I accidentally fell against the sink and cut myself."
The inspector checked the basin and found traces of blood.
    "I was in my compartment writing," Sir Near said as he showed
the police a neatly written five-page letter. "To my dear mother,
the Countess." An inspection of the letter proved that Near had
indeed written to his mother-- a cleaning lady in Hoboken.
    "I was in my compartment the entire time," Ali testified.
"Doing my nails." As she nervously stuffed her hands into the
pockets of her Dior dressing gown, the inspector noticed a wet patch
on her robe front. In the middle of the wet patch was a stubborn dark
 red stain that had refused to come out.
    Inspector Testarosa immediately realized that one of the three
alibis was shaky.