“Perhaps,” I said with incautious naiveté, “the settlor had no desire to benefit that institution.”
“Oh,” said Julia, “it wouldn’t actually get anything, you know. But it’s indisputably charitable by the law of both England and Jersey, so it’s convenient from the tax point of view to make it the default beneficiary. I don’t say that was the invariable practice — sometimes there was a provision that in default of appointment the fund should be held on trust for the Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue. Or the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or someone like that.”
“In the hope of engaging their sympathies?”
“Not exactly. The Revenue used to contend, you see, that the default beneficiaries under this sort of settlement would be liable for tax on capital gains realised by the trustees even if they never actually received a penny of the fund. So some people liked to draw settlements which on that view would impose the liability to tax on the Chairman of the Board — you know how people in Lincoln’s Inn enjoy teasing the Revenue.”
“Perhaps Sir Walter Palgrave,” I said, “held some similar public office — the name seems faintly familiar.”
“I thought so too,” said Julia, “but I don’t know in what connection — he certainly wasn’t Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue. Well, whoever he was, it looks as if his family may receive a rather pleasant little windfall if Cantrip’s clients don’t manage to identify their settlor.”
“But, Julia,” I said, “the position is ridiculous. They must have some way of finding out who he was.”
“Oh no, I shouldn’t think so,” said Julia. “If they had, you see, it would mean there was some loophole in the arrangements they’d made to protect the confidentiality of their client’s affairs, and that’s not at all what one expects of a Swiss bank — the Swiss are very serious about that sort of thing. I rather wish I’d warned Can-trip about that — if his clients knew he’d been mentioning the name of the settlement in an uncoded telex, they might be rather upset about it.”
“Were you able to offer him any advice?”
“I sent him a telex suggesting that his clients should apply to the Royal Court of Jersey for directions. But, as you will see, he feels that the idea will not appeal to them.”
TELEX CANTRIP TO LARWOOD TRANSMITTED 10:30 P.M. SUNDAY 29TH APRIL
Yoo-hoo there, Larwood — thanks for the telex, but not ruddy likely. My clients go waltzing along to the Royal Court to get directions and who’s that sitting at the back of the courtroom with his notebook out and his ears flapping? The chap from the Financial Times, that’s who, Larwood, the one who’s always chatting up Selena and wanting to do exposés of things. If you were a Swiss bank that had lost its files and didn’t know what to do with nine million quid, would you want a half-page spread in the F. T. about it? You bet you wouldn’t.
Not to worry, though, it doesn’t look as if giving legal advice is mostly what I’m here for. I’ve found out what Clemmie wanted me for, and it’s not because she thinks I’m the world’s greatest tax lawyer and it’s not for what Ragwort thinks either. I got her to come clean about it after dinner on Friday evening.
We’d been having dinner at Patrick Ardmore’s place at Gorey, which is a rather jolly little fishing village at the eastern end of the island — all of us except for Darkside, who said he’d got work to do even if no one else had. We had a lobster each and lots of wine and everything was pretty bonhomous until someone said something about the Cayman Islands. I didn’t hear what it was exactly, because I was having a cosy chat with Ardmore’s wife — rather fanciable blonde doctor, who thinks all tax planners are more or less round the twist. I just heard someone say “last year in the Cayman Islands,” and then everyone not saying anything for a bit, and then someone else talking about something completely different. But it definitely seemed to cast a blight, and we never got properly bonhomous again.
So the party broke up quite early after all, and Edward Malvoisin drove us all home — viz me and Clemmie to the Grand and Gabrielle to a tremendously smart-looking place about halfway between Gorey and St. Helier. On the way there Gabrielle said she’d hired a car for the weekend and would Clemmie and me like her to drive us round a bit? To which Clemmie said that she, i.e. Clemmie, couldn’t make it, because she’d got to work on some papers, but Cantrip, i.e. me, would love to, wouldn’t I? She kicked me on the ankle and I said yes, rather, because no one can say I don’t know a subtle hint from my instructing solicitor when I get one.
Pretty peculiar was what I thought it was, so when we got back to the Grand I hauled Clemmie into the bar and got her to spill the beans about why she was so keen on me going driving with Gabrielle. And the gist of it is that what she wants me for is to be a sort of bodyguard.
The Daffodil crowd get together twice a year, once here and once in the Cayman Islands, and at all the last three meetings before this one Gabrielle’s had the feeling that someone’s following her. Clemmie says she pretends to treat it as a sort of joke, but she’s really pretty rattled about it. Clemmie was getting worried about her, being rather a fan of hers, and she reckoned it would be a good idea to have someone around this time who could make themselves useful if there was any trouble. But she didn’t want Gabrielle to know she’d fixed it up on purpose, in case Gabrielle thought she was fussing and got miffed.
When I asked if she’d any ideas about who it was, she said they both reckoned it must be the Revenue, but what they weren’t sure about was whether it was the English Revenue or the French. To start with they thought it must be the French, on account of Gabrielle having a lot of French clients that the Frog tax inspectors would probably like to get the goods on, but that doesn’t square with it always happening at Daffodil meetings. The Daffodil setup’s all geared to saving tax in the U.K., so on balance they think it’s probably our lot.
I was a bit spectical at first, or whatever the word is for thinking your instructing solicitor’s having you on about something, but Clemmie was dead serious about it. She says the U.K. Revenue play pretty rough nowadays — not as rough as the French, but much rougher than they used to. She reckons that these days they wouldn’t turn a hair about bugging your telephone and searching your wastepaper basket and things like that, and she doesn’t see why they should draw the line at putting a tail on someone if there was enough tax involved to make it worthwhile.
I asked her if all this had anything to do with whatever it was that happened in the Cayman Islands that everyone wanted not to talk about, but she pretended there wasn’t anything and I’d just imagined it. You can’t call your instructing solicitor a barefaced liar, even if she is an old mate, so I couldn’t find out any more about that.
Anyway, I promised I’d stick to Gabrielle like a postage stamp for the rest of the weekend, which actually sounded like rather a jolly scheme, and if any sinister chaps in false beards started leaping out of the undergrowth, I’d be on hand to biff them.
I say, Larwood, is this tax-planning business really as exciting as these Daffodil characters seem to think or do they just make believe it is to make life more interesting? I mean, if I’d known it was all about codes and secret documents and biffing chaps in false beards, I wouldn’t have minded going in for it myself — let’s have some of it in our book.