One Foot in the Grave by Peter Dickinson

Mike alone before long and tell him the truth. It wasn’t the sort of thing anyway which pushes a case along the wrong tracks—an old buffer who thought he heard a shot. …
    â€œYes,” said Cass quietly. “It was quite a storm. But Dr. Follick tells me you heard a shot. He says you were quite definite about it.”
    â€œWell … yes, I suppose I was sure at the time. It was just after Jenny left me. Between nine twenty-five and nine-thirty, then. There was a lull in the storm, and I heard it—knew what it was at once. Thought I knew, I mean. If you asked me now … anyway, I lay there for a minute or two, and then I started to get in a fret. … When you get old, you know …”
    â€œYou’re sixty-four, Jimmy,” said Mike rather sharply. “I looked you up.”
    â€œI know, I know. It’s blood pressure … has the same effect … Jenny will tell you …”
    â€œHe’s perfectly all right,” said Jenny in a dry voice. “He’s good for years and years. But he’s been very ill, and that’s like being old. Go on. You haven’t got much longer.”
    â€œI’m all right,” said Pibble. “Listen, I told you about the man who came to the kitchen door to do the shutters and the lights. I didn’t know his name was Tosca, but I guessed he must be one of the security men. I thought I’d just go down and tell him about the shot. I got up and dressed—”
    â€œWhy?” interrupted Cass. (Not How? —he wouldn’t see that that was the real question. Jenny would, though.)
    â€œKeep warm. I get cold, you know … besides, this man, finding some old idiot in the kitchen, still in his dressing gown, rabbiting on about hearing a shot. …”
    Mike grunted affirmation. He was a good policeman. He understood about the obstinate vanity of decay—old women spending half an hour putting on their makeup before tottering along to the station to report some urgent horror, old men. …
    â€œYou made a dummy,” said Cass.
    â€œI didn’t want Jenny to worry.”
    They glanced at her for confirmation.
    â€œHe didn’t want me to find out, more likely,” she said, still remote and clinical. “Then he could tease me about it next morning. It’s a game, you know. They like doing things they’re not supposed to, just to show they still can.”
    â€œSome Colditz!” said Cass. “Where were you while all this was going on, me old Stalagführer?”
    â€œPutting my other patients to bed, I imagine.”
    â€œYou were in Turnbull’s room when I went by,” said Pibble.
    â€œYou couldn’t have … oh, yes, that’s right—I went back to him.”
    â€œOK,” said Cass with a reluctant shrug. “So you went down to the kitchen to wait for Tosca. But he didn’t come. Because he was dead. Then …?”
    â€œI’m not quite sure. I suppose getting down there had taken it out of me a bit more than I expected. Perhaps I was feeling a bit cocky about having got that far. I got impatient. I went and tried the door—I expected it to be locked, you see, but it wasn’t—”
    â€œYou’re quite sure about that?” interrupted Cass.
    â€œOh, yes. How else could I have got out otherwise?”
    â€œThey run this place like a fortress,” said Crewe. “Everything locked. That’s right, isn’t it, Nurse?”
    â€œYes,” said Jenny. “I mean, we’ve got our own door in the staff wing, but we aren’t allowed night keys to it. It’s always locked just before dark, and after that we have to come in and out through the main entrance.”
    â€œOK, I’ll check what the routine was for the kitchen door,” said Cass.
    â€œSomebody usually saw the kitchen staff out after supper and locked it,” said Pibble. “I could hear them, but the storm