The Possibility of Evil

She began to cry silently for the wickedness of the world when she read the words: Look out at what used to be your roses.

The town where she lived had to be kept clean and sweet, but people everywhere were lustful and evil and degraded, and needed to be watched; the world was so large, and there was only one Strangeworth left in it.

She knew everyone in town, of course; she was fond of telling strangers – tourists who sometimes passed through the town and stopped to admire Miss Strangeworth’s roses – that she had never spent more than a day outside this town in all her long life.

Miss Strangeworth never concerned herself with facts; her letters all dealt with the more negotiable stuff of suspicion.