Having devoted the following Monday, almost without interruption, to my researches in the Public Record Office, I was by evening in much need of refreshment. It was a few minutes after half past five that I made my way to the Corkscrew, expecting it to be some time before I was joined by any of my friends. I found Julia, however, already there, though she claimed to be still working. She had thought that a glass of wine would prove an aid to the construction of a particularly opaque provision of the new Finance Bill. She could not permit herself, therefore, to engage in any immediate sociability. In the meantime, she suggested, it might amuse me to read the telex messages which she had received from Cantrip in the course of the weekend.
TELEX M. CANTRIP GRAND HOTEL ST. HELIER TO J. LARWOOD 63 NEW SQUARE TRANSMITTED 6:30 P.M. FRIDAY 27TH APRIL
Look here, Larwood, what I want to know is why everyone here thinks I’m so frightfully witty when I haven’t made any jokes. Is everyone loopy in this tax-planning business?
The thing I’m meant to be advising on is a thing called the Daffodil Settlement — don’t ask me why it’s called that, it’s some sort of code name. If you think that’s peculiar, wait till you hear the rest of it.
The trustee of the thing is a Jersey trust company which is owned by a Swiss outfit called the Edelweiss Bank. The bods actually running it are an Irishman called Patrick Ardmore, who’s the top man in the Jersey company, and a French bird called Gabrielle di Silvabianca. She’s in charge of the Edelweiss office in Monte Carlo now, but the thing was set up fifteen years ago when she was working at the Jersey office and she’s gone on looking after the investments.
We all got together this morning in Edward Malvoisin’s office and it looked at first like being a pretty genial sort of gathering, with Clemmie and Malvoisin being frightfully chuffed about seeing the French bird and the French bird and the Irish chap being frightfully chuffed about meeting me and a general spirit of chuffedness all-round.
The French bird is rather good news. I don’t mean fanciable exactly — must be fairly ancient, and she’s got one of those squashed-in-looking faces, with sort of mud-coloured eyes not leaving much room for anything else — but the sort of bird that livens things up somehow. Edward Malvoisin says he fancies her like mad, but it doesn’t do him any good because she’s batty about her husband. She’s married to an Italian — he’s a count, like Italians mostly are, so that makes her a contessa.
The Irish chap is all right as well — bit of a smoothie, but sound views on getting through the heavy stuff in plenty of time for drinks before lunch.
Then the accountant turned up, long stringy chap by the name of Gideon Darkside with a face like a skull and crossbones, and lowered the geniality level by about 90 percent. He spent twenty minutes explaining how his plane had been held up and it wasn’t his fault he was late and another twenty telling us how important it was to get down to business and not waste time on gossip, so it wasn’t till nearly halfway through the morning that anyone thought of showing me a copy of the settlement.
There were pages and pages of stuff about the trustee’s investment powers and that sort of thing, but the gist of it was that it was a settlement made by a chap called Philippe Alexandre, who lived in Sark, for the benefit of the descendants of some chap called Sir Walter Palgrave. At least that’s who it said it was for the benefit of — when I looked at the bit about discretionary powers it turned out that the trustee could give the loot away to anyone it liked, and these Palgrave characters would only get what was left over.
The first thing that got me worried was that it said the trust fund was one hundred pounds sterling, and I pointed out that wouldn’t go far towards paying our expenses, let alone any fees that anyone might be thinking of charging. They all thought that was tremendously witty, even old Darkside. They said there was actually a bit more than that, and when I asked how much they said nine and a quarter million quid, give or take a hundred thousand. So we should be all right for our fees.
So I said all right then, if that wasn’t the problem, what was? They all looked a bit embarrassed and not awfully keen to explain, but in the end Clemmie said the problem was that they sort of couldn’t find their beneficiaries. What I thought she meant was that all these Palgrave characters had gone off to America or somewhere leaving no forwarding address, the way beneficiaries do sometimes, and I said the best thing would be to hire a private detective to track them down.
They all thought that was frightfully witty as well. They don’t know a thing about the descendants of this Walter Palgrave chap and they don’t give two hoots what’s happened to them, because the last thing they’re going to do with this trust fund is give a penny of it to these Palgrave characters. The idea of having a settlement where the people named as beneficiaries are the ones that are actually going to get the money didn’t seem to be one they’d ever heard of before, and they weren’t too keen on it. “Prejudicial to confidentiality and fiscal effectiveness” was what they thought it would be — I suppose they meant it would make it more difficult to keep things dark from the Revenue.
So I said all right, if they weren’t going to give the money to the Palgrave characters, who were they going to give it to? So they said what they wanted to do was give effect to the wishes of the settlor. I asked if there was any chance that that meant the Philip Alexandre chap, who was supposed to have made the settlement, and like I was rather expecting by this time, they thought that was so witty they nearly fell off their chairs. What they meant by the settlor, they said, was the chap who’d actually put the money in in the first place, and it certainly wasn’t Philip Alexandre.
So I said fine, who was the chap who’d put the money in and how were they going to find out what his wishes were if there wasn’t anything in the settlement to tell them? That’s when they started looking as if they’d definitely rather be talking about something else. According to them, the usual thing with this sort of settlement is to get a separate letter from the settlor telling the trustees what he wants them to do with the cash. No deed or witnesses or anything, just a few notes scribbled out on the first bit of paper they’ve got handy — back of an envelope or something like that. I said all right then, where was the envelope that the settlor’s wishes were written on the back of?
So, bearing in mind that this is a nine-million-quid settlement run by a top-class international bank with high-powered professional advisers, what do you think they’ve gone and done with the envelope? Absolutely right, Larwood, lost it is what they’ve gone and done.
Well, the line they take is that they haven’t lost it exactly, because so far as they know it’s still sitting on some file or other in somebody’s office somewhere. It’s just that they’ve all got thousands of files and they don’t know which one it’s on. It’s not on any of the ones to do with the Daffodil Settlement so what they reckon is that it must have been filed under the name of the settlor. But there’s nothing in the Daffodil files to say what the name of the settlor is, because that would be prejudicial to confidentiality and fiscal what’s-it. And they’ve just tumbled to the fact that none of them actually knows who he was — the only one who did was a chap called Oliver Grynne, who was the senior partner in Clemmie’s firm and kicked the bucket some time last year. The only thing the rest of them know is that the settlor snuffed it a few weeks before that and that means it’s time they started doling out some loot.
I pointed out that strictly speaking there wasn’t anything for them to get in a tizz about, because according to the settlement the trustee could give the trust fund to anyone it liked, so there was nothing to prevent the Edelweiss outfit from trousering the loot and saying no more about it.
Gabrielle thought that was the wittiest bit of all and laughed like a drain. Well, not like a drain really, because she actually sounds rather nice when she laughs, sort of bubbly but not squeaky, like champagne coming out of a bottle. Anyway, she laughed a lot.
The rest of them didn’t think it was witty at all, they all looked a bit shocked, and Darkside made a face like a corpse sucking a lemon, as if I’d made a joke in the middle of a funeral service. The way they saw it, trousering the loot wasn’t on. Inconsistent with the bank’s international standing and reputation for unblemished integrity was what they said it would be — I suppose they meant it would look bad if anyone found out. So they wanted to know what else they could do.
Sweet suffering swordfish, Larwood, what do they expect me to do about it? Pull the beneficiaries out of a hat for them? Send me a swift telex if you’ve got any bright ideas.
Over and out — Cantrip
“To such innocent minds as Cantrip’s and my own,” I said, “the arrangements which he describes appear bizarre. I assume, however, that to one versed in Revenue matters they are entirely normal and commonplace?”
