Danny is directing traffic on the road out of town when a driver, seemingly drunk, narrowly avoids him and crashes. The driver, a travelling salesman staying at a Ballarat hotel, is pronounced dead at the scene. But it turns out it wasn't the crash that killed him - someone had hidden a snake in his car. When Danny is bitten by the snake too, Blake faces a rush to both find the murderer and save Danny by identifying the snake and the antidote.

Doctor Lucien Blake, still a fish out of water in Ballarat, finds himself on the judging panel for the Begonia Festival. When one of his fellow judges is found dead in his burned-out greenhouse, the prime suspects are the head of the judging panel, Charles Griffith, and his rough-hewn local rival Nick Manos. Both seemingly have a motive, and Danny is only too keen to keep interviewing Nick Manos's beautiful daughter Maria about her father's whereabouts. But Blake feels there's more to this than a rivalry about begonias. Meanwhile, a letter arrives for Blake from Singapore, finally giving him some hope that his missing wife and daughter may still be alive.