She got up abruptly and without looking at him, she went over to the window.
“Future?” she said. “But I haven’t a future. I know I haven’t.” She stared at the red ball of the setting sun as it slowly sank below the horizon, casting a red glow over the sea. “My time’s running out, Paul. There’s no future for me, only a very immediate present.”
II
“It’s got to look like an accident, Jack,” Gollowitz said. “It’s got to. If there’s the slightest suspicion of murder, we’re finished. A full-scale inquiry would put us out of business. Someone is bound to talk once the pressure’s on. It’s got to look like an accident.”
Maurer sat hunched up over his desk, his small eyes gleaming angrily. For ten days now he had racked his brains for a way to get at Frances, but the solid wall of defence that Conrad had erected baffled him.
“She’s got to die!” he snarled. “The only way to get at her is to set fire to the hotel. Then when they bring her out, we’ll swarm all over them.”
Gollowitz spread out his fat hands pleadingly.
“We’ve got to think of another way. We can’t do it like that. It’d finish us.”
Maurer got up and began to pace the floor.
“What other way? Goddamn it! There is no other way! How are we to get at her unless we smoke her out? How the hell can we make it look like an accident?”