Whose Face Was Scratched Out

Chapter 1:

# The Woman at the Upper Gate

The first time I saw the photograph, I thought someone had scratched out the woman’s face.

It hung behind the counter of a small florist’s shop beside Saint Bartholomew’s graveyard. The photograph was brown with age and curled at the corners. It showed perhaps twenty people standing outside the cemetery’s upper gate. The men wore dark coats. The women wore heavy dresses in layers of black and gray.

One woman stood apart from the others.

Her body was turned toward the gate, but her face was nothing more than a pale blur.

“Who is she?” I asked.

The florist, an old woman named Mrs. Mercer, looked up from the stems she was cutting.

For a moment, the scissors remained open in her hand.

Then she placed the photograph facedown.

“Nobody you need to know,” she said.