The Day the Laughter Stopped, page 16
At one o’clock in the morning, Virginia woke again and began to writhe in pain. Glennon quickly summoned Dr Beardslee. Virginia complained bitterly of the pain which was still emanating from her lower abdomen. Dr Beardslee gave her another injection of morphine and atropine, then re-examined her.
He examined her pulse, heart, and reflexes, and generally went over her body. Apart from a bruise in the upper region of her left arm, which was of no consequence, her body was unmarked. He concentrated on her stomach. The abdomen was sensitive and rigid. She could hardly bear to be touched. Again Dr Beardslee left without discussing the possibility of hospitalization.
The hotel detective kept Maude company until nearly four o’clock in the morning. In the Arbuckle suite, all was quiet.
At five o’clock in the morning, Maude summoned Dr Beardslee from his bed. Virginia was once again in severe pain. Beardslee gave her a third injection of morphine and atropine, he gave her an enema, and then because she had not urinated at all since she had become ill the previous afternoon, he catheterized her with a glass catheter which Maude Delmont later described as ‘the biggest one I have ever seen.’ Beardslee said later that the catheterization ‘produced a scant amount of urine, about five ounces, and it was tinged with blood. It was old blood, very dark, almost of a coffee-ground consistency.’
He was also to say of this visit: ‘The facts were self-evident at this time. I knew I was dealing with a lesion of the bladder, and from the signs and symptoms, and the scanty urine tinged with blood, I knew that her internal condition was at least complicated by bladder trouble. A ruptured bladder, I suppose.’
Dr Beardslee was also to say that at no time during any of his four visits to Virginia Rappe did he see any evidence that she was suffering from intoxication. Yet after this examination, Dr Beardslee left, again without telling either woman of his conclusions, without mentioning hospitalization, without administering any drugs or medicine except atropine and the pain-killing morphine, which merely masks the patient’s true condition.
Maude Delmont had by now become dissatisfied with Dr Beardslee. She telephoned Dr Melville Rumwell and asked him to take over the case. He said he couldn’t until Maude told Dr Beardslee that his services were no longer required. With medical etiquette satisfied, Dr Rumwell called on the two woman at 8.45 a.m. on Tuesday, 6 September.
First he got a history of the case from Virginia and Maude. Virginia repeated what she had told her two previous doctors – Rumwell was her third in less than twenty-four hours – and added that she had been vomiting through the night. She told him that when she was sick, the pain extended from her lower abdomen right up to her chest. Rumwell questioned her closely, but she was unable to throw any light on her illness. After her initial collapse, she simply did not remember what had happened. Rumwell felt her pulse and found it strong and regular. He examined her abdomen; there were no marks on it, no signs of violence. His diagnosis was that she was suffering from alcoholism.
His case notes for 6 September read: ‘Patient gives history of having been intoxicated last night. She does not remember just what happened, complains of pain in abdomen, vomiting, some trouble with the urine. Dr Beardslee was in attendance and was asked to withdraw from case. His bill was paid at the office of the St Francis. Used hot applications and stopped the use of morphine.’
Maude was beginning to convince herself that Roscoe was to blame for Virginia’s condition. She had no evidence to justify such a belief, and all of her conversations with Virginia indicated the contrary. But Maude felt aggrieved. When she had staggered into Arbuckle’s suite the night before, asserting that Roscoe should have taken her to dinner, she had been told in no uncertain terms what to do with herself. That she had then been ejected from Roscoe’s suite by the hotel detective had not warmed her to the comedian, and by Tuesday she was beginning to harbour a deep resentment. She continually told Virginia that Arbuckle was to blame for everything and must be made to pay for everything; that although Virginia could remember nothing, she, Maude, knew what had happened. It didn’t matter that she and Sherman had been in a locked bathroom at the time. Maude knew that Roscoe had attacked Virginia.
The repeated accusations were not without effect. At three o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, Nurse Jean Jameson came to care for Virginia. She found the young woman in a hysterical condition. Virginia told the nurse all about the party. She also said that ‘She thought Arbuckle had thrown himself upon her.’ She asked the nurse to examine her abdomen to see ‘if anything is broken’. The nurse carried out an external examination and found nothing. A short while later Virginia asked, ‘What do you think could have happened? What could be broken in my insides?’
Nurse Jameson quickly realized that she could give little credence to any of Virginia’s statements or questions, since they fluctuated so wildly. At one point Virginia declared that she could not remember whether she had been dragged into the bedroom by Arbuckle; at another time, she said that she had definitely been dragged into the bedroom (Maude suggested this idea). She asked the nurse if Arbuckle had sexually interfered with her, asked Nurse Jameson to examine her vagina and the surrounding area. The nurse did, and found nothing. Nurse Jameson felt she was dealing with a patient hysterical because of an excess of alcohol.
Roscoe, having paid the hotel for all of the weekend expenses, drove Lowell Sherman and Fred Fischbach to Pier 7 to catch the ferry to Los Angeles. It was a leisurely way to make the return journey: the steamer Harvard sailed at 4.00 p.m. and didn’t reach Los Angeles until late the following morning. At the pier, Roscoe drove his massive car on to the boat and parked, then strolled to the rail with Sherman and Fischbach to watch the other passengers come aboard.
Among one group of passengers, Fred spotted Irvan Weinberg, the friend who had called the day before, saying he wanted Fred and Roscoe to meet Doris Deane. Now Fred and Roscoe were introduced to Doris and her mother, who had been seen off by Lee Dolson, a business associate of Doris’s father.
Fifteen minutes after the steamer had sailed, a steward came to the cabin that Doris shared with her mother, with an invitation for the two women to join Roscoe and his friends for dinner in the stateroom, which Roscoe had reserved. Doris recalled for me that first evening:
He was the most charming man I ever met. During dinner I discovered that I was out of cigarettes. I smoked Melochrino at the time. Now you would think a big star like that would snap his fingers to get somebody running to him. Not Roscoe. He just got up quietly, excused himself for a moment. When he returned, he gave me a carton of cigarettes. He was so different to how one imagines a big movie star. I don’t just mean that he was kind and considerate; he was certainly that. But his range of conversation was very extensive. Quite a number of other big stars that I’ve met in my life have just one topic, themselves. He talked of many things that night. About music. The theatre. Literature.
This meeting took place a mere twenty-four hours after the party. Roscoe was calm and at ease. The man Doris Deane saw that night could not have done what he was soon to be accused of. At one point, the men discussed the way Virginia had torn off her clothes at the party and how she had acted afterwards. Lowell suggested after dinner that he and Roscoe retire to their cabin for a drink, but Roscoe declined and added quietly, ‘And this lady doesn’t want a drink either. It’s a pity she wasn’t at the party yesterday instead of some of those who were.’
Roscoe made a date to take Doris to the Majestic Theater in Los Angeles that coming Saturday evening, but it was a date he wouldn’t be able to keep, because by then Virginia Rappe would be dead. They had planned to see a play called The Ruined Lady. It was only one irony among many.
The fact that Roscoe and Doris met that day has been secret until now. Roscoe could not know then that he would eventually marry Doris Deane – and that one day her friend Lee Dolson would hold the comedian’s fate in his hands.
While Roscoe talked of many things that evening on the steamer Harvard, Virginia Rappe proved equally voluble. She had become exhausted with nervous excitement, and was experiencing hysterical pain, which moved all over her body: first she felt pain in her heart, then in her bladder, in her back, and in her stomach. The nurse thought they were all caused by ‘gas, from alcohol’.
Virginia talked about getting money from Roscoe. Nurse Jameson later assumed this was because the sick girl in some way blamed Arbuckle for her condition, but from the remarks she made, it seems clear that she was recalling her conversation with Roscoe at the party, when she had asked him for money to pay for an abortion. At one point the nurse heard her say, ‘It won’t do any good for me to go to Henry Lehrman and ask for money. He’ll turn me down.’
Pregnancy was just one of Virginia’s problems. She was also suffering from an unpleasant vaginal discharge that she did not want Dr Rumwell to know about. She had told Rumwell that it was leucorrhoea. Nurse Jameson knew better. She asked the girl for an explanation, and Virginia said, ‘I have had a running abscess for six weeks.’ Nurse Jameson pressed her for more details, saying, ‘You couldn’t have got that from Arbuckle in a day because that takes at least ten days.’
Virginia replied, ‘I got this abscess from excessive intercourse with my sweetheart.’
Dr Rumwell asked her several times if she was suffering from a vaginal infection or if she had ever been infected. The girl would only admit that she had had leucorrhoea.
On Wednesday a second nurse was brought on the case, Vera Victoria Cumberland. Catheterizations, enemas and hot compresses on the abdomen were continued, and a new treatment added: a Murphy drip.
Maude told Nurse Cumberland that Arbuckle had ‘jumped on Virginia and crushed her bladder’, but in answer to the nurse’s questions, she admitted that she had no evidence to support this accusation, that she had not seen anything, and that Virginia had not told her anything. Dr Rumwell had told her that the girl had a ruptured bladder, and as far as Maude was concerned, Arbuckle was to blame.
It was later said that Maude had this attitude because she smelled money – big money, because she had stumbled on a gold mine in the rich comic. When the party was over, she and Al Semnacher had gathered up the girl’s torn clothing; after it disappeared, parts of it were traced to both of them. Maude’s repeated insistence that Roscoe was to blame may have been calculated to ensure that, when the girl recovered, she would agree with Maude’s version of what had actually happened. This is mere speculation.
What is not is that on Wednesday, 7 September, Maude sent two telegrams, one to an attorney in San Diego, the other to an attorney in Los Angeles. The message in both was the same: ‘WE HAVE ROSCOE ARBUCKLE IN A HOLE HERE. CHANCE TO MAKE SOME MONEY OUT OF HIM.’ Roscoe’s lawyer was later to uncover evidence that put Maude’s suspicious behaviour in perspective.
Whether Virginia was party to a plot will never be known. She needed a fair sum of money for an abortion, but Roscoe had said he might give it to her anyway. Certainly the abortion was on her mind, though. She turned to Nurse Cumberland as she lay in bed and asked, ‘Do you know of a good abortionist in San Francisco?’
At 9.30 p.m. on Wednesday evening, Nurse Cumberland wanted to call Dr Rumwell to report on Virginia’s condition. Maude Delmont refused to let her, saying, ‘Rummy doesn’t want to be disturbed tonight. He has a crowd of company in the house.’ After an argument, Maude reluctantly agreed to phone the doctor.
Nurse Cumberland was later to state that during the time she was nursing Virginia, the girl said that she had had intercourse with Roscoe, but at another time also insisted that Arbuckle had not assaulted her, and that she had not had sex with him. Virginia was as inconsistent with her second nurse as with her first. And treatment remained bizarre.
Nurse Cumberland resigned from the case on Thursday, because she thought that it was being handled in a negligent manner. She was disturbed because despite the fact that the first catheterization had drawn blood as well as urine, no cystoscopic examination had been carried out, no X-rays had been taken, and no vaginal smears made. The list of what should have been done and was not, was endless.
Nurse Martha Hamilton took over from Nurse Cumberland, who discussed Virginia’s case with her replacement. During the last week of her life Virginia didn’t seem to understand how she had become ill. She would say, ‘I wonder if he fell on me,’ or ‘I wonder if he dragged me in.’ By now, she had developed a bruise on her left hip and another on her right arm. She asked the new nurse, ‘How do you think I got them?’ Nurse Hamilton suggested that they might have been the result of the drastic amateur first-aid treatment, particularly the cold-bath ducking. At another point, Virginia said, ‘I got those marks dancing.’
On Thursday, Dr Rumwell examined Virginia again. The nurses had particularly drawn his attention to the vaginal discharge. He concluded that she had gonorrhoea.
Having completed his examination, he decided that Virginia should be immediately hospitalized. Three days had elapsed since she had become ill at the party. Even now, when it was finally decided that the sick woman should be taken to a hospital, her medical story remained curious. She was not taken to a general hospital, but to the Wakefield Sanatorium on Sutter Street. The Wakefield Sanatorium was a maternity hospital.
Dr Rumwell was later to state under oath that he considered Virginia’s condition to be the result of alcoholism, and that with the history of the bloody urine, there was a possibility of some lesion of the kidney.
Virginia was admitted to the Wakefield at 2.30 p.m. on Thursday. The treatment previously prescribed was continued, with the addition of morphine injections at four-hour intervals. A blood count was taken, and showed ‘17,200 whites, with 91% polys.’ – a concentration of white blood cells that suggested generalized infection. Albumen and some red blood cells were present in the urine, which suggested further that the infection involved the urinary tract.
At 6.00 p.m. Dr Rumwell returned to the hospital and examined her. He then went to the theatre with his family. At 9.30 p.m. he returned to the Wakefield and found her condition was much worse. Virginia was complaining of pain in the lower abdomen, and when Dr Rumwell examined her, he noticed that it was more distended than before. Her pulse rate had increased considerably, and the doctor sensed that he was losing the battle.
Worried, Dr Rumwell called in a professor of surgery at Stanford University, Dr Emmett Rixford. Dr Rixford arrived at the Wakefield at 10.00 p.m. Dr Rumwell told him the history of the case and said he thought it was a case of peritonitis, which he personally believed might be due to a rupture of a pus tube. Dr Rixford examined Virginia. Her hands were cold, and her circulation was flagging. He confirmed Dr Rumwell’s diagnosis: her condition was extremely dangerous. He debated with his colleague about operating on the sick woman, and they concluded that it would be best to give her opium, as an operation would probably result in her death on the operating table. They seemed to be allowing her to die, and the realization of this shook Maude Delmont. She insisted on calling yet another surgeon, Dr W. P. Read.
Meanwhile, Rixford and Rumwell tried to explain to Maude Delmont what they meant by a ruptured pus tube. The Fallopian tubes lead from the ovaries into the uterus. When there has been any genital infection, such as gonorrhoea, the infection passes up through the uterus, and there is often a closure of both the inlets and outlets of the Fallopian tubes. Very often a considerable amount of pus accumulates within the tubes themselves. They become torous and can rupture spontaneously. Though Virginia insisted that she did not have such an infection, the doctors had evidence that she did.
Dr Rumwell had considered since Thursday morning that Virginia’s condition was the result of a ruptured pus tube, but at no time did he consider the possibility of immediate surgery. His view was that the best thing to do was to ‘keep her quiet until the inflammatory process had subsided’.
Dr Read arrived at the sanatorium at 11.30 p.m. Having examined Virginia, he agreed with his colleagues that it was now too late for surgery.
The following day, Friday, 9 September, 1921, at 1.30 in the afternoon, Virginia Rappe died in the arms of her friend, Sidi Spreckles, who had introduced her to San Francisco high society in 1915.
Dr Rumwell, dissatisfied with his own diagnosis, then embarked on a course of action that rivals for inexplicability anything that had preceded it.
He arranged for an illegal post-mortem to be carried out on the body of Virginia Rappe, and he started arranging for the post-mortem examination an hour and a half before Virginia died. At noon, he contacted Dr William Ophuls, professor of pathology at Stanford University, told him that he had a ‘very insecure surgical case’, and asked him whether he could be ready to perform a post-mortem examination that afternoon. Ophuls agreed to undertake the examination. However, Dr Rumwell did not phone the coroner’s office.
It was incumbent upon Dr Rumwell to obtain permission from the coroner’s office for the post-mortem. To perform a post-mortem without such permission was no trivial breach of medical etiquette. By doing so, Dr Rumwell risked imprisonment, which raised serious questions.
By her own admission, Virginia Rappe was pregnant at the time of her collapse at the party. After days of botched medical attention she was removed to a maternity hospital. Why a maternity hospital? She died. An illegal post-mortem was performed immediately. Why? Had an illegal abortion been performed on the body of Virginia Rappe while she was still alive? Was the illegal post-mortem an attempt to cover up an illegal abortion?
We will never know. The forces of justice that would be so intent on proving Roscoe Arbuckle guilty of murder did not at any time investigate the medical malpractice on Virginia Rappe – the malpractice which I am convinced caused her death.
In Los Angeles, Roscoe, oblivious of what had happened to Virginia since he had left San Francisco on Tuesday afternoon, was getting down to detailed discussions about his next film.
