Thank you, mchain and Eddy.
Yes, I understand the file is not recycled in the usual sense; and since the title/filenames of the file(s) I'm interested in are not appearing in the quarantine chest, I was hopeful there might be an obscure undelete/recovery alternative buried somewhere in Avast... oh, well.
However, since only the message of the last pop-up can be displayed (and even that disappears after a restart), I seem to have no record of other/prior files that also used to reside on my hard drive that have been deleted by the on-access file shield.
(I may pay attention to the pop-up messages regarding "threats" as they occur, but my family doesn't!)
I looked in the folder of log files as suggested by your link to the other discussion (and of which I was already aware), and not one of those files contains an entry matching the filename in the pop-up message for the now-deleted (false) "threat" file that was in the C:\Windows\System32 folder.
The Activity page shows only the number of "threats" detected/prevented for the previous month/30 days. It has no ability to display the filename(s) deleted that I can find.
It seems no history record is kept at all of the automatic repair(failed)/quarantine(failed)/deleted(ultimately) action sequence. Is this correct?
I was also hoping to find the reason for the failure of the repair/quarantine move-to-chest attempt before the ultimate deletion. Was it a permissions issue (although I was/am running in the Admin account when the Avast message popped up)? Was the "threat" file marked "Read Only"? Now I'll never know...
Any other suggestions? Or is such a detailed history a feature only of the paid versions of Avast?
Thanks again.