In their Wisdom by C.P. Snow

For nearly all of his acquaintances, there was no news of Hillmorton over the Christmas holiday and the start of the new year. Ryle heard nothing. Nor did his daughter Liz, safely cocooned most of those short dark winter days in Julian's flat. There was one person who did have news, though he was scarcely even an acquaintance. This was Doctor Pemberton.

Hillmorton, not only evasive out of habit, had been disingenuous when he seemed to answer Ryle's questions about his health. He was stoical, unusually so, but not as stoical as he pretended. He had not gone to a doctor to be examined, but he had, before that evening in the club, spoken to one of his fellow members on the hospital board of governors. He had spoken as it were nonchalantly. He was having ‘a bit of discomfort'. It was nothing to bother people about, but just possibly it mightn't be a bad idea to be ‘looked over' when that didn't interfere with anything else. He spoke so indifferently that the other man, who knew him only as a public figure, was taken in.