In an easy tone the well-known K. C. opened the case. He dwelt at some length on the strange circumstances of the death of Sir John Rellingham, described how he had been found murdered, and mentioned the newspaper agitation which had resulted first in the action taken by the Crown against the partners to compel disclosure of the terms of the trust, which action had resulted in the court decreeing the capital moneys to be the property of the surviving partners in their own right. “We now know,” said Mr. Barnett, “that in defiance of the injunction of the court, certainly an order obtained ex parte, but a valid injunction nevertheless, the partners and executors of Sir John took it upon themselves to destroy the sealed packet containing Sir John’s instructions as to the conduct and disposal of the trust.”
“How do you know that, Mr. Barnett?”
“My lord,” answered the K. C., “my learned friend who is against me in this case made a statement to that effect a few weeks ago, when acting for one of the partners in a motion in one of the other courts concerning the distribution of the money. I presume he will not contradict his previous statement?”
“Oh, dear no!” said Tempest, without rising from his seat. “If my learned friend’s client hadn’t known the papers had been destroyed, she wouldn’t have dared to bring this action.”
“I can only say,” continued the K. C., “that this is a most improper observation to have made, and I am surprised at my learned friend allowing such a scandalous suggestion to have been put into his mouth.”
“Mr. Barnett,” said the judge with a smile, “we hear many scandalous suggestions of that kind in this court. I should have thought that, with your experience of them, you would hardly allowed your imperturbable equanimity to be ruffled by what Mr. Tempest said. He has still to prove it, you know.”
“Quite so, my lord;” and then the K. C. passed to another result of the newspaper agitation which had been “the cause of the arrest and trial of Mr. Baxter, one of the defendants in the present case, for the murder of his partner, the late Sir John Rellingham. I know your lordship will permit me to dissociate myself and my client from any possible accusation of repeating any such suggestion here. Rather, if I may, would I tender to Mr. Baxter congratulations on behalf of our mutual profession at the happy issue of those proceedings, and I would congratulate my learned friend as well, for he was closely concerned in that issue.”
“Mr. Barnett, aren’t you rather on the horns of a dilemma? If you congratulate Mr. Tempest too much, you’ll be making the very suggestion you repudiate.”
A smile went round the court, and, as the ushers called for “silence,” the learned counsel resumed his speech.
“The delay in bringing this action, my lord, or rather the delay in making the claim which has resulted in this action, was not due to the reason suggested in the innuendo of my learned friend, but simply to the fact that Lady Rellingham was absent from England, and was not aware of the death of Sir John. I cannot ignore the unhappy fact, my lord—it is bound to come out in these proceedings; but Sir John and Lady Rellingham separated within a few months of their marriage, and since that separation never again cohabited with each other, and I understand never again met each other. So complete was this separation, that it came as a great surprise to all of us, including those of us who had known the late Sir John Rellingham intimately, to be informed that he had ever been married before his marriage to the late Lady Rellingham, whom we all knew. My client will go into the box, my lord, and will give the court the short history of her brief married life. I shall put in the certificate of the marriage. None of the witnesses are now alive. It was a marriage in a London city church; and the two witnesses, the verger and a cleaner, were then both old, and they and the clergyman who performed the ceremony are all dead. But I shall call before your lordship the mother of the plaintiff, who will identify her daughter. She was aware of her marriage; and there cannot therefore be any objection, successfully upheld, that my client, Lady Rellingham, is any other person than the lady who went through the ceremony of marriage with Sir John. The real difficulty I have to face, my lord, is that the terms of Sir John’s will are so strange. Not only does he create a secret trust, but he attached to it this curious clause: