Such, in sum, was this countess with the impressively long name, and beside her the poor princess from Romania wilted like a flower in a drought. Not that this concerned me, of course; I was there for an entirely different reason; the social whirl was a backdrop for my activities and I paid only very little attention to it. I heard about the leading figures of the town, but conversed with only a few of them. My main reason for being there was very specific; I needed to discover something about coal. Equally, it was an opportunity to meet Mr Wilkinson, who went walking every summer in the Pyrenees; he was a great expert on the flora and fauna of the region and published a book, just before he died, on wild flowers which is now a standard text on the subject, for those who are interested in such things – which, I must confess, I am not.

But the coal was the main reason, and the justification for spending a week in the Hôtel du Palais at John Stone's expense. Britain was going through one of its periods of anxiety about the Mediterranean. It was always going through these, of course, but currently anxieties were higher than usual; the fear was that there was going to be yet another assault on Britain's position in the Near East, with the Russian Empire and the French combining to pressure our interests in the Black Sea and Egypt, and hence our communications with India through the Suez Canal. Although the Royal Navy could cope quite easily with an assault by either fleet, the fear was that the French and Russians were going to combine their efforts, and dealing with both simultaneously would be a problem. That was why, more than anything, the Government was keen to prevent Russia building a shipyard on the Black Sea and so be in a position to service a major fleet in the region. That was also why the Russians were keen to do precisely that.

So were the French thinking of sending out their fleet from Toulon? That was what I was supposed to discover. All the usual sources of information had failed; if anything was planned, word had not yet filtered down to the ranks. But it probably would not have done; I doubted anything would materialise before the following spring at the earliest, in about seven months' time. The problem was that, if Britain needed to reinforce its Mediterranean fleet, it needed to know soon, so that ships could be recalled from the West Indies, re-equipped and sent out again. This also would take several months.

Hence my interest in coal. Battleships consume prodigious quantities of fuel, and keeping them at sea, ready for action, is a major logistical operation. Tens of thousands of tons of coal are required, and supplies have to be in place at coaling stations when they are needed. You cannot just send out some ships any more; you need a lot of work in advance, for a battleship lying dead in the water, unable to move, is no use to anyone. While all navies kept reasonable quantities of coal scattered around the world, not even the Royal Navy kept that amount in place everywhere it might be needed.

Had the French navy been ordering coal in large quantities? Had they commissioned tenders from the Mediterranean merchant fleet to distribute it? Were supplies being diverted from the Atlantic ports to the Mediterranean? If I knew the answers to these questions now, I would be able to tell the Government in London not only what the French navy would be doing next year, I could hazard a guess about French foreign policy in the near future as well.

To discover all this I ended up dining one night in August with a French naval captain and his mistress. He was a sweet man who should never have been in the military; he had not a shred of the martial about him and preferred collecting Japanese woodcuts to charging over the high seas ready to board an enemy. Family tradition and an overbearing admiral for a father had determined otherwise, however. Ordinarily, I would have spent time trying to come alongside the father, so to speak, but Captain Lucien de Koletern was quite interesting enough for me at that moment. For he was a terrible failure, poor man. His lack of ability in the business of commanding others had meant that the navy, with some acuity, had refused to allow him anywhere near anything that actually floated; instead he had been given a job in Paris, in which place he spent his time trying to avoid the disappointed frowns of his father and – more importantly – organising logistical supplies, in particular coal. For this he had some considerable talent; what he lacked in dash and flair he made up for in meticulous attention to detail and an obsessive concern with filing cards.

He was an interesting conversationalist, as well; he knew he was a bitter disappointment to his family, but was quite philosophical about it.

'I know it sounds absurd, but I really do believe that what I do is where the future of the navy really lies. Not with ships at all,' he said.

'And what do you do?' I asked innocently.

'Supplies. Coal, mainly.'

'But doesn't a navy need ships?'

'Not really. If you think about it, the French navy has not actually been used for anything since the Crimean War, and there is little prospect of it being used again. If the ships never left harbour, it would make no difference.'

'But if that happened, you wouldn't have all that much to do,' I pointed out.

'Ah,' he said, waving a finger. 'But ships keep their boilers going even when they are tied up. That is enough to keep me busy. Then what happens? If the fleet ever put to sea, they would suddenly decide they wanted more. Do you have any idea how much coal a fleet needs when it sets off somewhere?'

'No. Not the slightest,' I said.

'About 2,000 tons per month per battleship. A fleet of, say ten battleships, fifteen destroyers and thirty or so other ships would need about 45,000 tons a month. All of which has to be found at fairly short notice. That's why it's a nuisance.'

'Difficult,' I said sympathetically. 'Is this making your life complicated at the moment?'

'Fortunately not,' he said, and I relaxed; I was home. 'There was talk that something was going to happen in the Mediterranean – exercises or some such. So I went to the Admiral and asked what was required of me. Nothing, he said. All just rumours; no more than that. In fact, he said I could run the stocks down a bit, just to punish the suppliers for hiking the price for good-quality coal last time they thought the fleet might put to sea.'

'Who is your admiral?' I asked. He sounded a well-informed fellow; it might be a good idea to meet him one day. Besides, I had to check that he really knew what he was talking about.

Lucien told me, bless him, and I knew my quest had ended. The Admiral was in command of the Toulon fleet, a man with good connections to the French Foreign Office. A man with a future, who knew what he was talking about, and did not make mistakes like saying something that meant the fleet would not be ready for action when required. All that was needed now was to double-check with the price movements of wholesale anthracite on the Coal Exchange in Paris, and I would be able to report back to London. I changed the subject, and began to try and win over his mistress, who was now looking quite despairing at the tedium of the conversation. She became sulky and ill-humoured and caused several frosty moments of silence to descend on our little table. During one of these I saw Lucien gazing over at another table with a faint smile of interest.

'Maurice Rouvier, with a friend,' he said with delight. The slightest emphasis on the last word made me turn to look as well. 'She's a bit old for him. I gather he likes them somewhat younger.'

Rouvier was the Finance Minister; I knew him by sight, although I had not yet met him. He was not widely liked. Apart from the whiff of indecency that Lucien referred to, he was also rumoured to be less than straightforward in his dealings with his fellow men. To put it another way, he was devious even by the standards of politicians; a long and successful career awaited him. His presence there was in itself testament to the importance of holidaying in the right places; Rouvier was a man of the south, Mediterranean in origin and thus was also associated with the disregard for proprieties generally considered to be a characteristic of such people. Still, he was (it was grudgingly admitted) a man of ability: a finance minister who actually knew something of finance, which was unusual, and with a background in banking. And he had done well on the merry-go-round of French politics; he had had a turn as Prime Minister once already, and he has popped up in ministries with great regularity ever since. He had no known political opinions; indeed his only firm conviction lay in an undying opposition to income tax. Apart from that he would support anything and anyone who would further his career.