Catherine O'Shea is the oldest and most responsible of three O'Shea sisters. She has just buried her mother, one of the last victims of the 1918 flu epidemic. Her father had been one of the first, and her fiancé was killed in the war. And now there's a detective living at her hotel, The Black Swan, looking into the disappearance of her abusive brother-in-law. He is entirely the wrong person and it is absolutely the wrong time for her to give Detective Massey a second look.