Thanks for the tips. I down-loaded DBExtract but the e-mails now in the Recycle Bin are suffixed .bak. I've got all e-mails up until a month ago (idle git) backed up on external hard drive with a copy of Outlook Express Backup Wizard, so all is not lost. In any case, the files in the Recycle Bin are the least important of all.
Can the .bak files be changed to .dbx?