The Curse of the Snark

Book 16 in a series of chronological stand-alone plots. Australia, December 1900Watson and the Countess spend Christmas with Irene and Godfrey Norton at a swank seaside hotel popular with affluent holidaymakers seeking a cure for the vapours. Among the malades imaginaires is a case of consumption bravely borne by a retired admiral whose health takes a turn for the worse when a young man claims to be his long-lost son.
Is the claimant a fraud? Or genuine? Is he acting alone? Or has someone put him up to it?Can the scuttling of the admiral's yacht and the two dead bodies in the bay be connected to the claim?What do the guests at the hotel know? What secrets are they harbouring?And what has any of that to do with dead swans, smugglers, and the serpent in the mangrove?Before consumption claims the admiral's life, our two sleuths set out to find the answers.
This wheredunnit was inspired by the fictional Sanditon, the non-fictional Tichborn claimant, and the nonsensical Hunting of the Snark. Enjoy the hunt.