Page 78 of Six Days in Bombay

I nodded. “By all accounts—Petra’s, Josephine’s—you were the one she cared about most. You were different.” I paused. “You were a prize. She captured you when other women couldn’t.” I worried I was speaking too freely, but I couldn’t stop. “Perhaps you were too much alike? Both of you so sure of how easily you could seduce. The power must have been intoxicating.”

Paolo looked amused. “It was certainly exciting for her to come between her mother and me. Veena and I met at an art exhibitionin Venice. She pursued me.” He threw the now dismantled daisy on the ground. “Mira always wanted her mother’s attention—any way she could get it. She saw that coming between us would get her noticed. It did. Her mother was furious and went back to Prague. Mira stayed, but she lost her inheritance.”

He studied me for a moment. “Did she tell you about the first time she got pregnant?” Did I imagine the look of guilt on his face?

“The first time?”

“She ran to Prague and to Filip. He was her savior. If she got into trouble, he rescued her. Filip had a medical degree by then, but he never practiced. I’ve been wondering if that first operation—it was done at home, not in a hospital—had something to do with her miscarriage.”

Mira had had an abortion years before the miscarriage? The news would have shocked me a month earlier, but now I considered it as a nurse. I’d seen the dangers of performing such a procedure at home when the women presented themselves at the hospital. Lack of sterilization, improper tools—any number of things could compromise the procedure. Poor Mira.

We began walking again, the pea gravel under our feet crunching with each step. I said, “I was put in charge of her for the evening shift. Her husband brought her in. Naturally, I assumed the baby was his.”

“Well, Miss Falstaff, this may be difficult to understand, but I do want a baby with Whitney, and when she couldn’t conceive, we decided together that I should approach Mira. She was only too happy to comply—we were paying her handsomely—but she said we must keep it from Filip for as long as possible. She wanted time to break it to him gently.”

“By breaking it to him gently, do you mean…”

“Yes.”

“That you were impregnating her?”

“Yes.”

“And your wife agreed to that?”

He hesitated. “Not at first. But we had few options.” He paused. “Mira and I spent a week in a hotel in Milan—away from Florence—”

“And your wife.”

“Certo. Mira returned to India and we waited. A month later, she called with the news. Whitney and I were ecstatic. The pregnancy was progressing nicely. Mira was healthy. And the baby would look like me. If his skin was a little more olive, that would be fine. I am Italian after all. It would have been perfect.” He sighed. “How exactly did Mira die?”

I hedged. “An overdose of morphine.”

Paolo looked alarmed. “How?”

Oh, what was the use in keeping the truth at bay? “There was a vial of morphine left in the room. I was blamed for the oversight, but, Mr. Puccini, I swear to you I did not cause her death.” I willed him to believe me.

His eyebrows knitted together. “So then, what could have happened?”

I debated whether I should share my suspicions. “I can speculate, but none of it is verifiable.”

He pinched his nose. “Wait. How did she end up in the hospital in the first place? Mira was having my baby. I’d like to know. I’m going to have to explain it to Whitney anyway, and I may as well have all the facts.”

I chose my words carefully. “Well, I’m not sure I know much more. Her husband said she’d been complaining of abdominal pain and a severe headache for a few days. She started bleeding but waited hours before she asked to be taken to the hospital. When she arrived, it was obvious she’d had a miscarriage, and she was in a lot of distress.”

His forehead was lined with worry. “Did she suffer terribly?”

I hesitated. “She remained in considerable pain even after she lost the baby.”

Paolo thought for a moment. He said, “Neither Mira nor Filip wanted children. She always said she wasn’t going to have any.”

“What changed her mind? Why did she say yes to you and your wife?”

Paolo rubbed his neck with his palm. “Well, the money we were giving her would have allowed her to paint for a whole year without selling one painting. Her paintings sold but there was never enough money once her parents cut her off. Filip didn’t work, but he liked good clothes and wine and nice places to live.”

Was Mira the kind of person to whom this would have seemed a reasonable bargain? If she were with me now, I would ask her if having a baby for her former lover’s wife was worth the money? What about her dignity? Her pride? Or was I judging her too harshly as I’d done with Dr. Stoddard? As I’d done with her when she confided her regrets. She and Paolo and Petra and Josephine lived in a world so different from my own. With a different morality. How could I impose my beliefs on them?

Talking to her friends made me question how well I really knew Mira. There seemed to be many different Miras. I had known several versions of her. Mira the painter. Mira the patient. Mira the lover. As I had with Dr. Stoddard, I questioned whether we could know anyone completely.Things are never as they seem, Agnes had said. I kept having to learn that lesson again and again.

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