By Doc Willoughby

It is scandalous that Herr Doktor is able to spread such terrible rumours about me! I, Doc Willoughby have been medical doctor for this island for a great many years and just because he’s come here from away with his bleepy toys does not make him an expert in anything.

Herr Doktor has been telling people that Mrs A, The Crotchet Queen died of a violent blow to the back of the head right outside my very own consulting rooms. This is manifestly nonsense, the blow to the back of the head was caused by fainting, and the reason she was face down was that she bounced after she fainted. She has always been prone to bouncing and as her Doctor, I am the person best qualified to comment on this tragedy.

Mrs A had a chronic, compulsive yarn disorder which I had been treating for some time now with measured applications of brandy and certain secret compounds of my own. She came of me of her own free will and stayed because I was of great assistance to her, and not as rumour has suggested, because my medicines are inherently addictive. I do not care to know what kind of analysis Herr Doktor claims to have done in his lab! He is a charlatan!

Mrs A’s chronic, compulsive yarn disorder had frayed her nerves severely, leading to the fainting. It’s been a bad week for fainting, I grant you a number of people have done that right outside my rooms – that was very foresighted of them to collapse where help would be most readily on-hand. That I have been advertising a new medicinal compound is pure coincidence and I wish that uneducated islanders would stop making up these dreadful, uninformed rumours about things they do not properly understand. Like how normal it is for people to bounce onto their faces after falling and banging their heads.

Why would Herr Doktor suggest that a man of my excellent reputation is in the habit of killing patients right outside his own consulting rooms? It is clearly to direct attention away from himself. We should ask what he’s been doing, and what the lights in his lab at night are all about, and why he has secured his letterbox to stop right-minded citizens like myself from peering in. And we should ask why he was loitering about outside my rooms when Mrs A had her little accident. Was it the unexpected sight of his face that caused her to faint and thus bang her head in the first place?

It’s my word against his and he has no proof, no proof at all that I was holding anything in my hands at the time.