Property of a Lady

As he sat down at the microfiche screen, he thought this was where and how history was stored nowadays. It no longer preserved itself in carefully folded tissue paper, with lavender or camphor or magic charms scattered in the creases, nor was it set down in crabbed writing on curling brown paper, or stored in leather-bound books or pipe rolls or tax chronicles. The modern age packed its history away on microchips and SIM cards and within the electronic and Ethernet mysteries deep inside computers. Michael considered this, and he wondered what would happen to the present age’s history if the language of computers were to be lost. Would this present civilization become lost for all time, or would the people of the far future be able to decipher the fragments that survived, in the way Egyptologists deciphered tomb writings?

The sixties, as experienced in this part of the British Isles, looked to be a slightly gentler version of what was going on elsewhere. This quiet part of England-going-on-Wales did not seem to have succumbed to flower power or free love, although people in the photographs wore miniskirts and boots, and the girls had long, straight hair and Cleopatra-style eye make-up. The men sported Beatles’ hairstyles and narrow trousers.

At first he thought he was not going to find what he wanted – that the brief disappearance of a seven-year-old girl would have been too slight an incident to warrant a newspaper report. And then, quite suddenly, it was there. Three columns of a news story, with a photo of a small girl with long hair and a slightly turned-up nose that gave her an impish, rather attractive, look.

MISSING GIRL FOUND SAFE AND WELL IN CHURCHYARD



Local girl Evie Blythe was last night found alive and well in St Paul’s Churchyard, after being missing from her home for almost forty-eight hours. Local residents helped look for her after she failed to return home from school on Tuesday after a sports’ afternoon – searching all night and most of the following day.



At first it was feared Evie, 7, had been abducted, and fears grew for her safety. However, she was found by searchers near an old grave in the disused part of the churchyard, apparently suffering a temporary loss of memory.



Older inhabitants of Marston Lacy recalled a similar case before the war, when a small girl vanished for several days and was later found in the same churchyard, apparently with no notion of how she got there. But police have quashed speculation that there could be some form of copycat crime at work.



Superintendent Halden told our reporter that not only were the two cases a good thirty years apart, but in neither case did there appear to be any sinister motive. ‘We can only conclude that Evie was overcome by tiredness after the school sports’ event,’ he said. ‘And that she succumbed to a bout of temporary amnesia. We’re delighted to have found her safe and well.’



It is known that short-term amnesia can sometimes strike at random, more often after some form of trauma. It is unusual in so young a child, but not entirely unknown.



Evie told our reporter that she can’t remember how she came to be in the churchyard. ‘It’s a fusty old place,’ she said. ‘I’m not going there again.’



St Paul’s Church, thought Michael, leaning back from the screen and turning his head from side to side to ease the tension that had built up in his neck and shoulders. She was found in the churchyard near an old grave. So was another girl thirty years before that. He hesitated about searching for the earlier story, but it was more important to locate St Paul’s Church and get out there as soon as possible.

He went out to request a printout of the article and, while he waited for it, asked the helpful receptionist if there was a local phone book he could consult.

There was one church dedicated to St Paul in the phone book. It was listed as St Paul the Apostle, and it was on the edge of Marston Lacy. Michael got back into the car, turned it round, and headed back.

This was so wild a shot, a bow drawn at such an unlikely venture, that he did not think he could phone Inspector Brent yet. It might take up police time and resources better used elsewhere, and it might raise Nell’s hopes only to dash them. But was it so wild a shot? Two girls, both found in the same churchyard? Yes, but one was over sixty years ago, said his mind.