Blood and Money

by Thomas Thompson

  Busy as she was with her telephone calls, Joan did not note the passage of time. But when her son returned with his new haircut well past 7 P.M., Joan recognized that he had been gone for more than two hours. Why, she asked the little boy, did it take so long? Boot squirmed uneasily; clearly he did not want to answer. Her curiosity whetted, Joan wheedled an answer out of the child. “Daddy made me promise not to tell,” insisted the little boy. “It’s just between us,” pressed his mother, making a conspiratorial game.

  With reluctance, Boot spilled the beans. After his haircut, he had gone with his father to the apartment where John lived during the separation from Joan. “Daddy had to pick up some music,” the child murmured.

  Joan kissed her son and sent him off to watch television. As soon as he was out of the room, she swore. “God damn!” she cursed, her cry summoning the house guests. Now she knew what she had long suspected. John still possessed the “love nest” and had the gall to take his own kid there. He was probably still supporting Ann Kurth, or some other dame, and the letter of repentance he had signed was not worth blowing her nose on. Patterns of John’s recent behavior began to make sense, the absences, the guilty looks. At that moment Joan hated John Hill and his lies. When Pa returned on the morrow she would throw the mess into his lap. He would tell her what to do. He was the only man she could trust.

  Joan hurried to the telephone and called Vann Maxwell, her best friend. “Please come over here. I have to talk to somebody. Everything’s falling apart. I slept all day and I’m nervous and tired and irritable.”

  Her friend sounded so distraught that Vann canceled other plans and hurried to the Hill house. Joan greeted her and announced that everybody was going to play bridge in the music room. Preparing double-sized highballs for her guests—there being no bar in the music room—she led her friends upstairs in a procession. John was already in the chamber, playing records and walking about checking the 108 speakers buried in the walls.

  The four women—Joan, Vann, Diane, and Eunice—began a bridge game at one end of the room, while forty feet away, leaning against the piano, John listened to his music, his head raised almost reverently. The volume was so high that the situation became lunatic. Diane and Eunice found themselves shouting out their bridge bids.

  Clearly Joan had no interest in the game. She was playing another more intense one. She kept beginning sentences that spoke ill of John, then stopping them before completion because she had whetted her husband’s curiosity and he had drifted nearer the table to overhear. “I’m going to the lawyer on Monday,” she finally said in a voice loud enough to be heard, even over the music. “It’s just about over between us.”

  Uncomfortable in the middle of the combat zone, Vann asked Joan to lower her voice. “He can hear you,” she hissed. “Can’t we discuss this later?”

  “I want him to,” shot back Joan.

  “Then I’m leaving,” said Vann.

  Joan pleaded with Vann to stay and complete the bridge game. Vann laid down a condition. “Only if you stop talking about John that way,” she said. “He’s right here, in this room. At least write notes if you have to say something.”

  Joan agreed. She began scribbling furious notes to Vann, shoving them across the bridge table, doing it with elaborate strokes so that her husband would see her method of communication. In the notes she told of Boot’s revelation about the bachelor apartment, of John’s inattention and misbehavior in general.

  Vann felt uneasy. The scene was theatrical and painful. She wanted to leave and let her friends argue their troubles out in private. Suddenly John put a slow, romantic, melancholy ballad on the record player. Joan looked up quickly, at the music, at her husband. Perhaps it was a song from their courting days. Tears came to her eyes.

  The tension impossible, Vann rose and went to the powder room. In her absence, John came over to the bridge table and hovered behind his wife’s chair. Diane broke the tension by suggesting that the couple dance.

  When Vann returned she beheld, to her surprise, John and Joan Hill in one another’s arms, moving slowly and romantically across the gleaming parquet floor. Joan’s head was buried in her husband’s shoulder. Touched by the abrupt turn in the evening’s weird events, Vann slipped out of the room and left the house. Later she would learn that Joan ran after her, distraught, standing in the driveway and shouting for her friend to return.

  Ash Robinson flew into Houston at breakfast time on Sunday morning and he telephoned Joan, as was his custom, to request that she pick him up at the airport. Diane Settegast answered the call and reported that his daughter was still asleep, feeling a little “flu-y.” No problem, said Ash. He would take a cab.

  As Ash was progressing into the city, his daughter rose and went downstairs in an old bathrobe. Her face was pale and her stomach a trifle upset. But she was cheerful and happy, an air of contentment wrapped about her. She took coffee and revealed to her house guests what had happened the night before.

  After their dance, John had led her upstairs, to their bedroom. As Diane and Eunice walked past toward their guest room, Joan had called out to say good night. Eunice had noticed through the open door that John was standing beside his wife’s bed. “Joan’s feeling lousy,” he said. “I think she needs a shot.”

  “Joan doesn’t need a shot,” Eunice said quietly. “She needs you.” John Hill nodded, as if to agree, and he shut the door.

  Now, sipping her coffee and playing with a piece of toast, Joan was anxious to tell of what went on behind the closed door. “He made me very happy,” she told her friends. “He told me things I’ve never heard from the man before in our whole married life. I think it’s going to be all right between us from now on.”

  Listening, Diane noted that Joan was “bubbling over with happiness.”

  Then a wave of nausea swept over Joan. Her face blanched. She hurried to the bathroom. When she returned, she was weak. “Well, I just tossed my breakfast,” she said. “I think I’d better go back to bed.”

  Joan spent most of Sunday in bed. John checked on his wife several times, and shortly after noon announced to the house guests that he was going to the drugstore to purchase medication “to give her a shot.” He asked that Diane Settegast fix Joan a Coca-Cola in his absence. Joan drank part of the cola and promptly vomited.

  In the late afternoon Joan went to the downstairs den and curled up with a blanket around her. She said she was very cold and queasy. Her husband felt her forehead and said she seemed to be all right, that it was probably a virus. He felt a little queasy himself, he said. Perhaps it was something they had mutually eaten. Quickly Joan checked back on her food intake for the previous days. The only unusual food was at the wild game dinner, and she had taken but a few bites. Perhaps, she said, whatever she ate did not agree with her.

  Several times during the day the telephone rang, and John usually hurried to answer before one of the house guests did. Twice Diane Settegast answered the telephone and on the other end of the line was a woman who spoke in a curious voice. “It sounded very ‘put on’ and ‘made up,’” said Diane later. “It was some strange-sounding woman who insisted on speaking to ‘the doctor.’”

  Just before 6 P.M. a musician named Ralph Liese appeared at the house to be warmly welcomed by John. Liese, an executive of the Houston Symphony and a veteran musician in the city, was chairman of a brass quintet that played at schools in the city for young audiences. John Hill played tuba with the group and was its star attraction. Not only did the youngsters enjoy the tuba, Hill was exceptionally good at talking to the students, explaining his instrument and answering their questions. On Tuesday, two days hence, the quintet was to play a morning concert at the Montrose Elementary School, where John was scheduled to perform a tuba solo, a debut, in fact, for the piece. The two men went into the music room, and for an hour John played his solo, “Exhibition for Brass.” Liese complimented him on how well he played, and John warmed. He had been practicing all week.

  When the ses
sion was over Liese inquired about Joan, for he had noted her absence. “Joan’s feeling a little urpy,” said John. “I think she’s lying down.” He invited his friend out for Mexican dinner, after which they could return to the house and play more music.

  “No, thanks,” said Liese. “As long as you know your solo so well, there’s no need for me to hang around.”

  John, his son, and the two women house guests went out for dinner and on their way home stopped at a quick food restaurant to purchase a carton of orange juice for the ailing Joan.

  Conversation was strained in the group, for Diane had spent an unpleasant half hour with Ash Robinson earlier in the day. He had offered her only two hundred dollars a month salary to run Chatsworth Farm, plus a small percentage from riding lessons. Diane protested that the offer was ridiculously low, but Ash had countered by saying that Joan’s farm was a huge money loser and nothing but an indulgence for her anyway. “Well, there’s no way anybody could live on that,” said Diane. The discussion terminated unpleasantly, and the two women made immediate plans to leave for Dallas the next morning.

  When they returned to the big house, John delivered the orange juice to Joan, stood by her bed while she drank it, then excused himself to go visit a musician. He did not return until past midnight, and in his absence Joan threw up several more times.

  On Monday morning, March 17, Diane and Eunice rose early, packed, and prepared to leave, wanting to get out of town before traffic snarled the freeways. Diane found John Hill in the kitchen where he was about to leave for the hospital and an operation scheduled at 7:30 A.M. How was Joan? she asked. He had been up and down with his wife most of the night, came the answer, and on his way to work he was going to stop by the Avalon drugstore and order medication. Effie, the maid, would be available to look after Joan during the day and see that she took the medicine.

  “Well, is she all right?” pressed Diane.

  “She’s got a virus,” said John.

  The two house guests went into Joan’s room to say good-by. She asked for a pitcher of water, saying her mouth was parched and she felt dehydrated. While Eunice went to fetch it, Diane asked if Joan wanted them to stay longer.

  No, said Joan. She would be all right. Effie was there if she needed anything, and Ma and Pa were just down the street. She was sorry that the offer Pa made was so penurious, but she was too sick to worry about it now. They would talk later. Both women kissed their hostess perfunctorily and left.

  Effie Green and her husband, Archie, had worked for the Hills less than two months, but they had been accustomed to the eccentric routine of the household. Often Effie had prepared dinner for the doctor, only to learn that he would be late. It was her custom to put the food in a warmer, frequently discovering the next morning that it had not been touched. She gathered that he either stayed away on some nights or was an indifferent eater. Both the doctor and his wife treated her kindly, and Effie grew quickly fond of her new employers. The Greens lived in servants’ quarters at the rear of the house, but generally left each Saturday noon and spent the weekend with their daughter, returning Monday morning.

  On the Monday morning when the women from Dallas left, John Hill instructed Effie specifically about his ailing wife. Let her rest, he said. Do not disturb her. Do not let her take telephone calls.

  During the morning, when only the two servants and Joan were in the house, Ash came over to see his daughter. Effie told him that she was asleep and was still feeling poorly. Frowning, Ash said he would return later. He went downtown to watch the market quotations on his broker’s ticker and to visit one of his rental properties.

  On this Monday Vann Maxwell waited all morning for her friend to call. During the tense bridge game on Saturday night, Joan had scribbled a note saying that she was going to her lawyer’s office on Monday to sue for divorce and to alter her will so that John would not receive anything in case of her death. “I’m chicken and I want you to go with me,” Joan had told her friend.

  When, by noon, the telephone had not rung, Vann called Joan’s house and learned from Effie that Mrs. Hill was resting and not feeling well.

  All day long Effie answered Joan’s busy telephone, telling callers that her mistress was ill and not able to accept calls. In midafternoon Archie Green told his wife that the situation upstairs “don’t seem right.” Joan Hill had not summoned either of them on the intercom system, nor had she made a sound all day. Effie told her husband, “You’d better go up there and listen outside the door and see if you can hear anything.”

  In a few moments Arch returned and said all was silent behind the closed door. Effie then went upstairs and opened the door quietly, disobeying Dr. Hill’s instructions to leave his wife undisturbed. Joan was awake. She spoke weakly to her maid. “I’m so sick, Effie.”

  Effie said that Dr. Hill would be home soon to check on her. Worried, shaking her head, Effie descended the stairs and began watching the clock.

  The next morning, Tuesday, March 18, Effie was in the kitchen preparing breakfast for Boot when she heard Dr. Hill summon her. The old black woman hurried upstairs and went into the sickroom. It was dark, the drapes drawn. She could barely make out Dr. Hill sitting on the bed, holding his wife’s head in his arms. She seemed limp and unresponsive. “Effie, get busy and clean up Joan’s mess,” he ordered. John was dressed in a business suit, preparing to leave for the school concert at which he would perform his tuba solo.

  The surgeon said he would return during the day to check on his wife. He had one last instruction: Make sure Joan takes her medicine. The instructions were on the label of each bottle. Effie nodded in understanding. She had more questions, but Dr. Hill was in a hurry. Before she could ask another, he was down the stairs and gone.

  Effie turned on the bedside light so that she could see. “Let me roll you over, Mrs. Hill,” she said, taking her in her arms and moving her across the bed. Under Joan, two white towels had been shoved, and beneath them were feces—soft, perhaps from recent diarrhea. There were also flecks of what Effie took to be blood. The maid was disturbed. It appeared to her that Mrs. Hill had lain in her own excrement for hours. Some of the fecal material was drying, indicating that it had been passed during the night. Her nightgown had not been changed since the morning before, when Effie last attended her.

  “I’m gonna clean you up real nice,” the maid said. “I ain’t going to let you stay like this. I’m gonna change your gown and wash you. Come on, let me help you get to the bathroom.”

  Joan nodded weakly. “I’m burning up,” she said. “I’m burning from here down.” She pointed to her neck.

  “What is it?” asked Effie.

  “I don’t know,” said Joan. “I’m just so sick.”

  Effie placed her mistress’ arms around her neck and she half dragged her to the bathroom. En route, Joan stumbled and had another bowel movement just before she reached the toilet. Effie, seriously alarmed, noted that Mrs. Hill’s face was turning blue, particularly her nose. Now she was cold.

  “I don’t want to die,” gasped Joan.

  “You ain’t gonna die,” said Effie. She stripped the soiled nightgown from Joan and sponged her body. Then she hurriedly gathered up the sheets and put fresh ones on the bed. Helping Joan back into the bed, Effie took her hands and held them tightly, trying to press warmth into them. “You’re not going to die,” she said. “Let’s pray together. God answers prayers.”

  “All right,” said Joan. “You pray for me, Effie.”

  Effie beseeched the Lord to help her mistress pass through the illness, then she ran to the stairway and called Archie. “Call Mr. Robinson down the street and tell him to come right away.”

  Archie did as he was directed, but there was no answer at the Robinson home. Effie then went to the telephone and called Dr. Hill’s office. The surgeon was not there, Effie was told. Well, she said, he’d sure better come running. “You tell him his wife’s terrible sick and he better put her in the hospital. Something wrong’s happening t
o her.” Effie glanced at the kitchen clock. It was a few minutes past ten.

  At that moment John Hill was on stage at the Montrose Elementary School, engrossed in his tuba solo. When the performance ended, a clerk from the school office handed him a message: Mrs. Hill seemed ill and in need of his attention.

  It happened that the plastic surgeon had made a previous appointment for this morning, squeezed in between his concert and his first operation of the day, scheduled for 11:30 A.M. at Sharpstown Hospital, a small suburban institution in the southwest corner of Houston. He was trying to work in a quick pacifying breakfast with Ann Kurth. His mistress had been pushing him hard for a decision on where she stood in his life. For three months now, ever since John signed Ash Robinson’s letter of repentance, she had been relegated to what she kept calling a “back street affair.” And she was fed up with her state. Ann Kurth was tired of creeping about in shadows.

  All during the week that the women from Dallas were in his home, and over the weekend when Joan fell ill, John had been slipping out to rendezvous with Ann, desperately trying to buy time. She had thrown an ultimatum at him: either divorce Joan and make an honest woman out of her, or she cuts this off. He had promised an answer on this Tuesday morning.

  But so many thoughts were clamoring for John’s attention that when he hurried out of the school auditorium to find his car, he was startled to discover Ann waiting for him. Taking her by the arm, he led her to a more private side street.

  “Joan’s got a bug,” he said. “I’m afraid we can’t have coffee this morning.”