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On the train to Santa Rosa (which arrives in a cloud of black smoke), he feigns illness to keep a low profile from the other passengers, but he is sick in another sense. Uncle Charlie is that sickness made manifest. And Young Charlie can feel it like a psychic force before her uncle’s arrival. There are glimpses of it in the seedy bar where Young Charlie’s friend Louise works - the closest Santa Rosa comes to looking like the outside world we see at the beginning. It’s suggested by the conversations about ways to get away with murder between Young Charlie’s father and his neighbor Herbie.

The uncovering of that evil may have coincided with the arrival of Uncle Charlie, but it was always there - or at least the capacity for it. Asked to summarize the overall theme of Shadow of a Doubt, Hitchcock offered: "Love and good order is no defense against evil.” Hitchcock shows us that, even in the American suburban home of the idyllic nuclear family, there is a sickness of evil lurking beneath the surface.