The Suspect

“How did you know Sampson?” Ron Waring asked. “You’re both artists, of course, but was your acquaintance one of long-standing, or more casual?” Franklin Johnson knocked back his drink before answering.

“We used to be good friends,” he said. “Ten years ago, or so.”

“Just after the War?” Ernest Carruthers asked. “You served together?”

“No. They wouldn’t take Sampson: childhood consumption meant his lungs weren’t up to it,” Johnson replied. “The refusal rankled him. Once he told me some girl had given him a white feather, before the Conscription Crisis. When he was drunk he’d rave about it.”

“Quite a few girls did that,” Poppy said. “The recruiters put them up to it. It was terribly childish and cruel, honestly, but it’s amazing what people will do for a dollar.”

“But you had served?” Carruthers asked. “Was he jealous of you?”

“I wouldn’t think jealous,” Johnson said. “There was nothing really glamorous about the trenches, after all. Still, I think he felt he’d missed out on the event that defined our generation.”

“Anyway, when I got home in 1919, I started looking around for a studio, and a mutual acquaintance introduced us. It just so happened that Sam had a loft, with room for another artist to work, and lovely northern light. It was in one of your buildings, Risse.”

“Once the war contracts ended, we had to close up a lot of buildings we’d thrown up during the War,” Carl Risse said. “I recall that we’d let the space out to anyone who could cover the taxes.”

“Exactly, just the thing a couple of artists needed,” Johnson’s demeanour had brightened up a little as he was speaking. I’m not sure if he was shaking off Sampson’s death, or if he’d just forgotten it in a flood of memories.

“We shared the space for a couple of years,” Johnson continued. “We had some shows together: Sam’s paintings of the Northern Wilderness and my paintings of Rural Canada. The critics loved it.”

“I recall seeing your works in Montreal,” Louise said. “I was struck that neither of you ever painted human figures. Just landscapes, sometimes with animals, but mostly empty of anything but rocks, trees, buildings, and sky.”

“It was something we both agreed about,” Johnson said. “After the War I felt sickened any time I tried to paint a figure; they all looked like corpses to me, and gave me nightmares. Sampson didn’t want to paint the human figure, either.”

“He told me, ‘Frank, I draw those damn mannequins all day, Monday to Friday, for Eaton’s, for Simpson’s, and I just don’t want to draw girls on my own time.’”

“But he didn’t draw men, either?”

“No, but I think it was the same thing.”

“So you were sharing digs, and both painting, what else?” Carruthers was listening carefully, but looking out the window, into the swirling mist; as if trying to discover the murderer, out there.

“We had a show, together, too – Landscapes: Settled and Wilderness”

“That was the one,” Louie said. Frank perked up; he seemed happy someone had remembered.  “I didn’t remember what it was called. It was quite good. But the next time I saw an exhibition of Sammie’s stuff, I heard you two weren’t working together any more.” 

Carruthers turned round and regarded Johnson with mild interest, “Why the change?” he asked. Johnson looked a little chagrined.

“Sam said he wanted more space,” he replied. “He’d been painting some big canvases, and he wasn’t a tidy artist. Besides, I’d been left a bit of money from an aunt, and thought it might be better to have my own space, too.”

“Really? I thought there had been a disagreement,” Louise shot him a curious look. Franklin gave her a look as if he wished she hadn’t brought it up. 

“We’d had a disagreement…an argument, really. But It wasn’t why we stopped sharing the studio,” Johnson said. “That followed afterward, the next year. I was getting ready for something new, a big show. ‘Faded Dreams’ I was going to call it.”

“Landscapes?” Louise asked. 

“No, something different,” Johnson replied. “Experimental stuff, using dyes, sunlight  and chemicals to make the images appear on the canvas, faded and ghostly. It was years ahead of anything people were doing in Canada, or the States.”

“I thought Sampson did that,” Polly interjected. “Using scraps of cloth, rags really, to make a few landscapes back around ’24 or ’25.” Johnson grimaced.

“He stole the idea,” he replied. “Did some awful pieces, mockeries really, of things he’d seen me working on. It was pure and simple jealousy, but he got his show before I got mine.”

“That’s right, I remember the critics were quite savage about your works – well, his too, but he had other things in his show.”

“And mine was all my new process.” Johnson looked like he wanted to cry. “We had a terrible fight. He tried to pass it off as taking the mickey out of me. He said that if I couldn’t handle a little kidding from a friend, I’d never survive the New York critics when I took my stuff there. I told him I never wanted to see him again.”

Carruthers rocked on the balls of his feet, looking rather satisfied. “So it would be safe to say that hard words were exchanged?”

“Yes. But, dammit, I haven’t seen him since,” Johnson threw out. “It’s eight years, if it’s a day, since we fought.”

“It doesn’t look good, does it?” Waring asked. “You have a fight; he leaves your career, or at least your great idea, in tatters. Yet, despite eight years passing by, the next time your paths cross, Sampson winds up dead?”

“It’s awfully suggestive,” Carruthers agreed. “The question that the police are going to ask is, did you kill him?”

“I swear, I harboured no ill will…not enough to kill him, anyway,” Frank Johnson said, lifting his glass, only to find it empty. “I never killed Sam Sampson, and I don’t know who did.”

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