‘A woman who would watch that kind of film,’ she stated categorically, ‘might well travel quite a distance to throw a bottle into the sea, so there’s no point looking in the regional papers.’

But finally, witheringly, she pulled out a local press directory, and as she was distracted by a telephone call, I pulled it over and copied out the details as fast as I could. By the time she returned I had nearly finished. As I turned to go I asked whether, in spite of her scepticism, she would like to know how I got on. She spun her revolving chair round with surprising eagerness and snatched up a piece of scrap paper. ‘I’ll give you my email address,’ she answered.

My confidence was at its lowest ebb. The librarian’s helpfulness had been overlaid with such condescension that I had doubts about my motivation and also about the ethics of my search. Had she not already ordered enough local newspapers to keep me busy for the foreseeable future, I would probably have given up right there. But the message soon arrived that my material was ready for consultation, and having travelled so far I decided to continue with my original plan of research. I would read all the local papers for the northern coast of France, starting from the west in Brittany and working towards the east, through Normandy towards Calais. I would concentrate on the early summer months, since the mother mentioned ‘the dawn of summer’ as the time of death. She also wrote, ‘Forgive me, my son for not having spoken to you for such a long time’; I concluded from this that she had been unable to express her emotions for a few years after his death so it had taken her some time to be able to put pen to paper. This seemed more likely than the alternative explanation that she had been unable to speak to her son properly for several years before he died.

So I decided to start my hunt in the month of June, five years before the bottle’s discovery. I was not entirely convinced of my logic, but faced with such a daunting prospect I could either go back home to London, tail between my legs, or simply start somewhere, and hope to strike paydirt.

To my dismay, the first of the newspapers, Ouest France, arrived on microfilm. I threaded up my machine and wound slowly through the issues, searching for the page of death notices. The Maurices were all very ancient. Monsignor Maurice Chatillon, an Honorary Vicar General, was 97; Maurice Rob, an ancient soldier of the Second World War, was 78; Maurice Lemaire was 92. This covered all the Maurices for June 1995.

After Ouest France I turned to Paris-Normandie, and then to Nord-Éclair. By the time I had spooled through these three newspapers for each of the thirty daily editions of June 1995 my eyes were dimming and my gorge rising with nausea. It was impossible to wind the microfilm any faster and still scan the articles and locate the obituary page; the floor of my booth was already tilting alarmingly, and I knew I could not continue in this way. It would be physically impossible to skim several decades of newspaper obituaries on microfilm. The decision had been taken out of my hands.