There were no more headlines about Nancy Collett or the Woman With No Head. Their story didn’t even make the back pages. An electric beginning, all the ingredients for a big trial, possibly a double hanging, then nothing. Not only had both women disappeared, but there was no progress in the case, except for some evidence that just made everything more complicated.

Namely: the brother of the deceased had come forward with a letter from Percival Collett in which he stated his intention to end his life by whatever means he could. It didn’t exonerate his wife, but she couldn’t be described as cold and calculating anymore. Even more compromising, there were rumors he was a homosexual. And since the botched hanging of Norman Skinner, many people had begun to question the notion of capital punishment. There had been protests outside prisons. Petitions. As for the Woman With No Head, also known as Margery Benson, it appeared she had simply been going on a big holiday.

Fortunately, plans for the Festival of Britain were now in full flow—a milestone between past and future, to enrich the present—and everyone wanted to read about that. The exhibitions, architecture, technology, the very best of British in science, industry, and the arts. People had suffered years of war: they had lost too much that they loved and been crushed by rationing. Now they wanted to think about the future, and they wanted hope. In London, the largest dome in the world, standing ninety-three feet tall, would hold exhibitions celebrating discovery not only in the New World, but also at sea and in outer space. A cigar-shaped tower, the Skylon, gave the impression of floating above the Earth. A new plush concert hall, the Royal Festival Hall, already stood on the South Bank. The Telekinema promised 3D film and large-scale television. And, for once, it wasn’t just London: the festival was for everyone in Britain. It would be nationwide.

A country that had spent years in rationing, in gray and brown, was coming alive with the promise of color and new possibility. Barely anyone cared about Nancy Collett and her accomplice with no head.

So even though a new sighting of the two suspects came through to The Times, it was from some woman yelling down the phone from an obscure little island no one had heard of, let alone been to. The editor let it go. What was the point, he asked his deputy, in giving people the stories they no longer wanted?

Britain had moved on.