A Magistrate who once worked in the chambers of lawyer Charles Vaucrosson told a Supreme Court jury yesterday that he refused to take on an estate case the attorney had asked him to handle because "I firmly believed that my suspicions (of wrong-doing) were fact''.

"From my perusal of the files, I had certain reservations, suspicions,'' Mr.

Edward King testified as Vaucrosson, who denies defrauding the beneficiaries of a deceased client of hundreds of thousands of dollars, watched from the dock.

Vaucrosson, who is alleged to have used the money to pay off personal debts, faces a total of nine charges.

The first eight, which refer to alleged activities between "an unknown time'' and March, 1991, contend that the lawyer stole money from the clients in amounts that ranged from $9,000 to $151,750, while the ninth alleges that Vaucrosson fraudulently committed some $393,782.58 in trust property to uses other than those that were authorised by the trust.

All of the charges, which contend that Vaucrosson funneled the stolen money through his personal investment firm Amulion, relate to his position as manager of the Bermuda estate of Percy Ball, a journalist who died in 1987.

After Ball's death, his sister Doris Philpott, who lived in England and entrusted Vaucrosson to manage the Bermuda end of her brother's affairs, became the administrator of his estate.

When she died in 1991, the responsibility passed to Philpott's daughter, Cynthia Lewis.

Yesterday, Mr. King told the court that he was asked on the departure of colleague Conor Griffin in September of 1991 to take over the Ball estate.

But while Griffin, who testified on Tuesday that he prepared the letter of transfer that allowed Vaucrosson to shift nearly $400,000 from the Ball account to Amulion, was deeply involved with the file, Mr. King said yesterday that he chose to demur.

"After Mr. Conor Griffin left the firm, I received instructions from Mr.

Vaucrosson to get the Percy Ball files -- I believe there were two files -- from the cabinet where Mr. Griffin kept the probate matters and make an application to have the probate resealed,'' he said.

"Well, I got the files and perused the files. Since I had never done any sealing or resealing of probate matters, I sought the advice of Mr. Griffin's former secretary for the purpose of finding a precedent that would assist me in resealing the grant of probate.'' Pressed by prosecutor Mr. Michael Pert on the "reservations'' and "suspicions'' that Mr. King said he experienced after perusing the files, the witness said "I firmly believed that my suspicions were fact'' when "Mr.

Griffin's former secretary was contacted by me''.

"I decided,'' he added, "that I wasn't going to get involved with this file.'' While the exact nature of King's suspicions were not pursued, it did emerge from his testimony yesterday that Philpott's English lawyers were growing increasingly annoyed with Vaucrosson's "prevarications'' and "procrastinations'' in forwarding 30,000 for the British inheritance tax that Lewis owed.

Mr. King, who said that his role at Vaucrosson's "was solely to do with legal affairs, not finance'', also identified five large cheques that involved either Vaucrosson or Amulion and bore his signature as one of the law firm's signing officers.

Mr. King said he could not recollect the circumstances under which he signed the cheques.