In the midst of the discussion being held in the doctors’ lounge shortly before dawn, Dr. Bertinot, who was severely shaken that his patient had so suddenly died, remarked to John Hill that an autopsy must be done.
John Hill nodded affirmatively, murmuring, “Yes, of course.” Dr. Bertinot went to telephone the hospital pathologist, a Dr. Arthur Morse, and rouse him from bed to put the post-mortem protocol into operation. But at the same time John instructed his friend Dr. Oates to telephone the Settegast-Kopf Funeral Home and have them come to claim the body and prepare it for burial. At this point the stories become confusing and the sequence of events blurred. But one point stands out: an illegal and puzzling event quickly occurred.
Shortly after 6 A.M. on the misted, fog-draped morning, a Cadillac casket coach backed up to the rear entrance of Sharpstown Hospital and two attendants removed the body of Joan Hill, a chenille coverlet covering her. Then the corpse was transported to the red brick colonial-façade undertaking parlor on Kirby Drive, several blocks away from the Hill home on the very same street. It seemed that everyone was in a hurry this chaotic morning. When one of the funeral home’s employees, a Mrs. Verna Bee Cummings, arrived at work at 6:40 A.M.—she is a meticulous person and remembers the time well-she noted that the light was on outside the “prep” room, which meant that inside a body was being embalmed. Mrs. Cummings opened the door to say good morning to the night embalmer, a man named Dick Chalk, and she noticed across the room, on a marble slab, the corpse of a blonde woman.
“You’d never guess who I have on this table,” said Chalk, glancing up from his work. “Joan Robinson Hill.”
Mrs. Cummings whistled in recognition. That was a big name. It would mean a big funeral. “Probably a goat-roping,” she murmured to herself, using the house term for a major event with a full chapel of mourners and probable coverage by the media.
Sometime in the confusing two-hour period between 4 A.M. and 6 A.M., Dr. Bertinot reached the Sharpstown staff pathologist, Dr. Morse, at his home. He would not recollect the exact time, because he did not have a bedside clock. All he could remember from the conversation was that Dr. Bertinot informed him (1) Joan Robinson Hill was dead, (2) an autopsy must be done, (3) the body was being removed to the Settegast-Kopf Funeral Home, and (4) Bertinot had no idea as to the cause of the famous woman’s death, other than that he felt she had died of a massive infection, and kidney failure.
Pathologist Morse did not leap from his bed and dress and hurry to the hospital, for he was unaware of the circumstances of Joan Hill’s death. He failed to ask how long she had been in the hospital, and he would later state that he “assumed” she had been hospitalized longer than the twenty-four-hour period that legally requires an autopsy by the county coroner. Moreover, he was recently come to Sharpstown Hospital, having been there but six weeks. At his previous place of employment, the Spring Branch Hospital in Houston, it was rigid policy for all autopsies under the twenty-four-hour rule to be cleared with the coroner. Because so many people die from obviously violent causes in Houston—the city’s murder rate in 1969 was, per capita, one of the largest in the entire world—the coroner and his staff were kept busy attending to more dramatic deaths and their reasons. The coroner was forced to rely on private hospital pathologists to perform autopsies on routine deaths that fell within the twenty-four-hour rule—provided permission was first granted by the medical examiner’s office. Dr. Morse would later testify that he “assumed” someone at Sharpstown—Bertinot, perhaps, or a head nurse, or even John Hill, who was, after all, a duly qualified physician—that someone, for Pete’s sake, had touched base with the coroner. But no one had.
It was not unusual for an autopsy to be performed at a funeral home. At the time, Sharpstown Hospital did not even have post-mortem facilities. Dr. Morse was accustomed to dropping by funeral parlors and doing his studies on the embalmer’s marble slab before the undertaker did his work.
The young pathologist rose, had breakfast around 7 A.M., and prepared to drive to the Settegast-Kopf Funeral Home where he would slice open the body of Joan Robinson Hill and investigate the agents of her death. But someone had been there ahead of him.
Embalmer Chalk, due to go off night duty at 7 A.M., began his work at a quarter past six, spending several minutes “fixing” the facial features, twisting the jaw and lips into a pleasing expression and stuffing cotton wadding in the mouth to keep the faint smile from slipping. Then he sewed the lips shut and picked up a sharp tool. Making an injection into the femoral artery of the leg, he inserted a clear plastic tube, placing a second tube for drainage in the vein adjacent. Then he turned on a pump, and embalming fluid began flowing through the injection tube, swimming hurriedly throughout every region of the body, shoving out the blood and other body fluids through the drainage tube.
Within forty-five minutes all of Joan Hill’s blood was drawn from her body, running through the tube into a nearby sink, to be washed away in the sewers of the city.
When pathologist Morse arrived at the funeral home near 10 A.M. he was taken aback to discover that Joan Hill was already embalmed, her blood and other vital fluids—so necessary for his microscope—forever lost. The nude body was resting on the marble slab, and a note had been dropped on the waxen cheek that had smiled out of ten thousand newspaper photographs. “Hold for autopsy,” it said.
In the terrible two hours of John Hill’s sobbing and attendant confusion, his friend Jim Oates suddenly asked a pertinent question. “Have Ma and Pa been told?” John raised his head and shook it, negatively. Then it must be done immediately, urged his friend. Newspapers find out about these matters quickly. Joan was a famous person. Some early edition police reporter would be calling the Robinson home for quotes. It might shock these old people into their graves.
John agreed. It was obvious to everyone in the room that he dreaded this task. He began to delay, wondering out loud who should preach the funeral, what mourners should be summoned from out of town. Jim Oates took his friend by the shoulders and shook him and demanded that he look him squarely in the eyes.
“It’s your duty, John. You’ve got to tell these old people. If you need moral support, Dotty and I will go with you.”
In front of the Robinson home, in the fogged dawn, John stood beside his car. Fearfully he approached the front door of the rust-colored house where he had lived for six years with his wife and his son. Just as he raised his finger to press the bell, he broke out in sweat. Perspiration drenched his face. He hesitated a suspenseful moment. Then he rang and waited for someone in the sleeping house to come and hear.
THIRTEEN
“We’ve lost Joan,” said John.
Ash Robinson said nothing for a moment. He sucked in air and sat quietly on the edge of his bed. Then he rose and prowled the room, his heavy body balanced improperly on his bare feet, the photographs of his daughter smiling at him from every wall like the four corners of his earth.
“I’m sorry, Pa,” said John.
“The doctors did everything they could,” put in Dr. Jim Oates. Dotty had her arms around Ma, whose face was gray and whose body had no bones.
Finally Ash spoke. “Why?” he asked. “Oh, tell me it’s not true.”
His son-in-law nodded in reaffirmation of the terrible news.
“But she was all right last night,” insisted Pa. “I saw her. They told me she was gonna be all right.”
Dr. Oates began an explanation of how Joan had slipped into irreversible kidney failure, but Ash seemed not to listen. He wandered into the living room and sank into his favorite chair. The two doctors in the room watched the old man intently for a few moments to see if he could tolerate the tragedy. But Pa was strong. Abruptly he rose and went to Ma. She buried her face in his shoulder and wept heavily.
John whispered in Jim Oates’s ear to give either of the old people a sedative should it be needed. Then he went upstairs to the room where he and Joan had slept in the long years of his medical training, and he stretched out o
n the bed in his green scrub suit and fell into a light sleep.
Dr. Morse began the autopsy of Joan at the funeral home. He had to hurry, for already a call had come from the Robinson home saying Ash was impatient to view his daughter in death. Family and friends were stalling the old man until Joan was “ready” to be seen.
Immediately, Dr. Morse noted that the corpse on the marble slab was that of an attractive, well-nourished young woman. He checked the death certificate. Barely thirty-eight years old. Then, beginning at the neck, he dissected the body, a direct downward cut like opening the zipper of a winter coat. In the next hour and a half the pathologist severed and removed major organs in the body, weighing each, slicing off little slivers of tissue and putting them in plastic containers for microscopic examination back at his laboratory. In many cases, a pathologist can make an accurate determination of death merely by his gross observations (meaning, what the naked eye sees). But this one was puzzling. There were no visible tumors, no noticeable atherosclerosis, nothing unusual to the eye save a pancreas that was soft, red and mushy. It occurred to Dr. Morse that the woman before him could have died from pancreatitis, an acute inflammation of the pancreas. At 11:30 A.M. he packed up his tools and his tissue containers and informed the undertaker that he was done.
At the height of their affair John Hill had given Ann Kurth a Page Boy, a beeper that many doctors use to keep in touch with office and hospital. He insisted that she keep it on her person at all times so that he could find her whenever he needed her. Sometimes he only had a few minutes between surgery, he had said, and he might want to hear her voice.
On the morning that the news of Joan’s death spread quickly across Houston, Ann Kurth was in a boutique trying on clothes when her beeper sounded. She went to the telephone and called home, for that was the custom, and the maid informed her that there were two “urgent” calls—one from a girl friend named Lou who was at that moment sitting under a hair dryer at a beauty parlor, the other from her stockbroker. “Both say it is very important,” said the maid. But there was no call from John Hill.
Ann found her friend Lou first at the beauty parlor. Lou came straight to the point. “Did you hear about Joan Hill?”
“Hear what?” said Ann.
“She died. Last night. Everybody in the beauty parlor is talking about it.”
“You’re kidding, Lou. This is a joke.”
“No, she’s dead. It’s on the radio. What does John say?”
Ann tightened her grip on the telephone. She could not yet accept the news. “I don’t know,” she muttered. “I haven’t talked to him since yesterday.”
Quickly she hung up and called her stockbroker. “I guess you heard your boy friend’s wife kicked off,” he said.
“I know … but I don’t know anything about it,” said Ann. She drove home, confused, wanting to see John but not knowing how to locate him. Surely he would call. Staying at her home was a house guest from Dallas named Joyce. She, too, was full of the shocking news. Ann sat down beside the telephone, watching, waiting. “Oh, God, why doesn’t he call?” she said.
Joyce tried to cheer her. “Listen, you’ve got it made now. Don’t get upset that John’s not calling you. My God, don’t you realize what’s happened? He won’t have to get a divorce now!”
Dumbly, Ann nodded.
Joan’s friends began gathering, not at her house, but at Ash’s home. By noon there were fifty people, and by sundown more than a hundred had arrived to pay their respects and offer their condolences.
At midday the funeral parlor began calling, wanting to know what gown Joan would wear in the casket. Should they dress her in one of the robes that were available in stock? A friend of Joan’s, a society horsewoman named Ann Lyons, took the call and hung up in distress. There seemed to be no one about capable of making a decision. John was upstairs in the bedroom still asleep. Ash was staring ahead at the wall, in an unapproachable world of his own. Ma was lost to sedatives and whiskey. Someone had fetched Boot from elementary school, but the child had not yet been told that his mother was dead. “Somebody’s got to do something!” said Mrs. Lyons in agitation. She noticed John’s office nurse trying to be helpful, and she instructed her to go upstairs and wake the surgeon.
Another friend, Yvonne Roper, who had known Joan since both attended Stephens College together, volunteered to go up the street to the Hill home and rummage through the closet to find something for her friend to wear to the grave. The funeral home had given only one proviso: whatever gown was selected must have a high neck to cover the autopsy cuts.
Memories flooded across Yvonne as she went through her dead friend’s closet. She was tempted to select blue jeans and a work shirt, for that was how she remembered Joan—whitewashing fences at Chatsworth Farm, leaping onto a horse and riding impulsively across a pasture, laughing, full of joyous life and promise. Then her eyes caught sight of the gold brocade gown Joan had worn at two recent and important occasions—a reception for Dr. Christiaan Barnard, the South African heart surgeon who had come through Houston to pay his respects to Drs. Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley, and the opera with John. She remembered Joan saying, “I always have a good time when I wear this dress.” Moreover, there was a bit of irony attached to the gown, for Joan had bought it in a fit of pique when the department store bills came in, revealing the news that John had bought expensive shoes and a matching purse for Ann Kurth.
Yvonne telephoned the Robinson home and spoke to John, now awake and functioning, and obtained his approval. Then she took the gown to the funeral home and waited until Joan was dressed for the last time. When the work was done, Yvonne was pleased. The gown was right—elegant, chic, and glittery, suiting a woman who had been so often in a spotlight. There would later be criticism of her selection, for some would say that Joan should have worn a riding habit to her grave.
To such, Yvonne would respond, “No, I knew her well, and I remember that horse show times were stressful for her. Joan got so keyed up that she had spasms in her back, and the pain was so awful it hurt to get out of bed.”
Now, as she stood over her friend, Yvonne noticed Joan’s hands—waxy, swollen, tinged yellow. They were unadorned. Even her wedding ring was gone, having been removed at the hospital. She telephoned John again. Did he want his wife to wear jewelry? John’s answer was precise, so firm that there could be no doubting his desire. “No,” he said, “the dress is ornate enough. No jewelry.”
Ash Robinson and his son-in-law went to the funeral home and quickly chose a casket—the $3,700 blue steel model with a lining of white velvet. The old man and the surgeon agreed that it was not necessary to select an outrageously expensive box. “Joan wouldn’t want us to spend $10,000,” said Ash. And John agreed. The funeral would be two days hence, on Friday, March 21, 1969.
By nightfall Dr. Morse had made preliminary microscopic examination of the tissue slivers from the body. Still the case was worrisome. There was no clear-cut cause of death. Some mysterious inflammation had spread throughout the body, its source and its exact nature unknown. If the pathologist had been able to study the blood and other body fluids he could have made a more scholarly ruling. But he did not come to the corpse until it was already full of embalming fluid. With not much to go on, he decided that a probable cause of death was pancreatitis. He would not bet his home mortgage on it, but it was as good a guess as any. He called Dr. Bertinot and made his report, and the attending physician in turn notified John Hill.
“Pancreatitis?” said Ash Robinson when told the news. “What the hell is that?” One of the doctors who had come to pay respects sat down beside the old man and began an explanation of the small but important gland that secretes digestive fluids and manufactures insulin. If the organ becomes infected and inflamed, it can bring on death. But usually this happens in a much older person than Joan.
On the next day, the eve of the funeral, Diane Settegast and her companion Eunice Woolen arrived from Dallas, shocked at the death of the woman they had
said good-by to only three days previously. Although Diane and Ash Robinson had spoken heatedly in their discussion of the chinchy salary he had offered her to run Chatsworth Farm, she was now all comfort to the old man and his wife. Next she went up the street to the great white colonial house to pay her condolences to John Hill. Only three or four cars were parked outside, in comparison to the traffic jam at the Robinsons’. It was as if mourning Houston knew by instinct that the greater loss was Pa’s, not John Hill’s.
Diane was admitted by Effie, the maid, whose eyes were red from weeping. Dr. Hill was upstairs in the music room. With guests. Effie began to lead the way, but Diane said she could find the room well enough on her own. There was no trouble remembering the unpleasant bridge game from Saturday night. Only five days ago, Joan was sitting in that room cussing John, scribbling notes across the card table, then dancing with her husband. How could death have seized her so quickly?
When Diane pulled open the double doors of the music room she encountered darkness. And, improbably, laughter. The movie screen had been pulled down from the ceiling and a Laurel and Hardy comedy was being shown. John was seated on a couch with a few people Diane did not recognize. Boot Hill and a playmate were on the floor, giggling. Expecting to find a man in deep grief, angered that a slapstick movie was being shown on the night before the funeral, Diane cut jaggedly across the dialogue. “Well, it looks like you’re having a good time, John,” she snapped, and hurried back downstairs.
But as her feet touched the foyer floor, John was hurrying down the curving staircase after her. Diane spun around angrily. She would remember the conversation that ensued and tell it thusly to many people:
“Why did Joan die, John?”
“She died of pancreatitis. I just wasn’t familiar with the symptoms. I wasn’t treating her for that.”
“Why the hell not? You’ve been through every god damn specialty there is. Ash paid for it.”
Blood and Money Page 16