VIII.
From Mr. Loscombe to Mrs. Noel Vanstone.
"Lincoln's Inn. November 17th.
"DEAR MADAM—I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, answering
my proposal in the negative, for reasons of your own. Under these
circumstances—on which I offer no comment—I beg to perform my promise
of again communicating with you on the subject of your late husband's
Will.
"Be so kind as to look at your copy of the document. You will find that
the clause which devises the whole residue of your husband's estate to
Admiral Bartram ends in these terms: to be by him applied to such uses
as he may think fit.
"Simple as they may seem to you, these are very remarkable words. In the
first place, no practical lawyer would have used them in drawing your
husband's will. In the second place, they are utterly useless to serve
any plain straightforward purpose. The legacy is left unconditionally
to the admiral; and in the same breath he is told that he may do what he
likes with it! The phrase points clearly to one of two conclusions. It
has either dropped from the writer's pen in pure ignorance, or it has
been carefully set where it appears to serve the purpose of a snare. I
am firmly persuaded that the latter explanation is the right one. The
words are expressly intended to mislead some person—yourself in all
probability—and the cunning which has put them to that use is a cunning
which (as constantly happens when uninstructed persons meddle with law) has overreached itself. My thirty years' experience reads those words in a sense exactly opposite to the sense which they are intended to convey. I say that Admiral Bartram is not free to apply his legacy to such purposes as he may think fit; I believe he is privately controlled by a supplementary document in the shape of a Secret Trust.
"I can easily explain to you what I mean by a Secret Trust. It is
usually contained in the form of a letter from a Testator to his
Executors, privately informing them of testamentary intentions on his
part which he has not thought proper openly to acknowledge in his will. I leave you a hundred pounds; and I write a private letter enjoining you, on taking the legacy, not to devote it to your own purposes, but to give it to some third person, whose name I have my own reasons for not mentioning in my will. That is a Secret Trust.
"If I am right in my own persuasion that such a document as I here
describe is at this moment in Admiral Bartram's possession—a
persuasion based, in the first instance, on the extraordinary words
that I have quoted to you; and, in the second instance, on purely legal
considerations with which it is needless to incumber my letter—if I am
right in this opinion, the discovery of the Secret Trust would be, in
all probability, a most important discovery to your interests. I
will not trouble you with technical reasons, or with references to
my experience in these matters, which only a professional man could
understand. I will merely say that I don't give up your cause as utterly
lost, until the conviction now impressed on my own mind is proved to be
wrong.
"I can add no more, while this important question still remains involved
in doubt; neither can I suggest any means of solving that doubt. If the
existence of the Trust was proved, and if the nature of the stipulations
contained in it was made known to me, I could then say positively
what the legal chances were of your being able to set up a Case on the
strength of it: and I could also tell you whether I should or should
not feel justified in personally undertaking that Case under a private
arrangement with yourself.
"As things are, I can make no arrangement, and offer no advice. I can
only put you confidentially in possession of my private opinion, leaving
you entirely free to draw your own inferences from it, and regretting
that I cannot write more confidently and more definitely than I
have written here. All that I could conscientiously say on this very
difficult and delicate subject, I have said.
"Believe me, dear madam, faithfully yours,
"JOHN LOSCOMBE.