Ashley Maplethorpe wore denim shorts and a tight black AC/DC T-shirt. His feet were bare. He had short blond hair, was tall, and looked as if he kept himself in shape. Kate was surprised to see Juliet Maplethorpe with him. She was a head shorter, the same height as Kate, and she wore a beautiful aquamarine-colored caftan with a print of large red-and-yellow dragon flowers. Her hair was a rich henna red and was damp and a little wavy. Kate could see the straps of a swimming suit under the caftan. Juliet was also barefoot and had a gold ankle bracelet on her left leg.
“Hello! Do come in!” said Ashley cheerily, as if they were old friends popping over for Sunday lunch. He was very well spoken.
“Hello, welcome to Thornbridge Hall,” said Juliet. She spoke with a soft Geordie accent, but her green eyes were sharp and cautious. “Ashley should have told you to text when you got here. The house is so big, it takes a while to get to the front door.” Her green eyes ran over Kate and Tristan with precision. We’ll have to watch out for her, thought Kate.
They went through a long hallway and living room where french doors opened out onto the back garden. It was vast, with a tennis court to the left, a swimming pool with sun loungers and umbrellas, and beyond, at the end of their land, was an ornamental garden with a maze.
There was a green cloth gazebo set up in the center of the lawn, with a table and chairs underneath, and it provided good shade, but Kate could feel the morning heating up as the sun climbed in the sky.
Despite the Maplethorpes’ casual summer attire, they had a butler who wore a stiff suit and jacket with tails. Kate was able to watch his progress, laden down with a large tray, as he emerged from the french doors and made his way across the lawn.
“Do you mind if I make notes?” asked Tristan.
“Could we have a copy of your notes, afterward?” asked Juliet. She had produced a small fan and kept up a nervous, rapid fanning of her face. She looked less at ease than her husband.
“Yes, of course,” said Tristan.
“We’re not journalists,” said Kate. “I can assure you whatever you say will be dealt with in strictest confidence.”
“I’d still like to take copies of your notes,” she said. “My previous experiences of talking to journalists haven’t been good.” Kate wondered what that meant. Was she worried about incriminating herself?
“Of course,” said Kate. “We’ll let you have all notes from this meeting.”
The butler arrived at the table and placed before them a jug of iced tea, with matching glasses, four espressos with milk jugs, and a plate with delicate petits fours fanned into a circle. The poor guy was sweating in his double-breasted suit, waistcoat, and starched collar.
“Will there be anything else?” he asked. Juliet shook her head. He bowed and left with the huge tray under his arm.
“The whole Joanna Duncan case has troubled me over the years,” said Ashley, leaning back in his chair.
“How long were you her editor?” asked Kate.
“It was around a year and a half.”
“You quit as editor two weeks after Joanna went missing. Why?”
“There was a conflict of interests,” said Juliet, fanning herself with one hand and pouring milk into her espresso with the other. Kate noticed a large pear-shaped diamond ring on her finger. “My company was under fire from the press about the government contracts we’d signed . . .”
“Yes. In 2001, Frontiers People signed contracts with the UK government worth a hundred and twenty-five million pounds,” said Tristan, paging back through his notes. “And you took a large dividend shortly after the government paid you. Nine million pounds of public money.”
There was an icy silence.
“I started the business in 1989, building it up from nothing. I reinvested millions back into the company in the nineties. I took that dividend of nine million pounds, which I was well within my rights to do after years of barely drawing a salary from the company. The newspapers got hold of this, twisting the story that I was taking taxpayers’ money out of the company. It didn’t help that I used the money to buy this place from the Thornbridge family, who’d owned it for centuries,” she said, indicating the house behind them. “The Daily Mail had a field day. A journalist from the West Country News wrote a piece on it all. Ashley refused to run the story. He was called up before the board and stood by his decision, and he resigned.”
“So when you left the West Country News, it was nothing to do with the disappearance of Joanna Duncan, or any story she was working on?” asked Kate.