—
This is the story as I’d heard it:
In May 1933, an article appeared in a Scottish newspaper that made headlines around the world. A businessman (university-educated, the reporter was careful to point out) and his wife were motoring along the newly built A82 on the north side of Loch Ness when they spotted a whale-size animal thrashing in otherwise perfectly calm water. Letters to the editor followed describing similar incidents, and the journalist himself, who happened to be a water bailiff, claimed to have personally seen the “Kelpie” no fewer than sixteen times. Another couple reported that something “resembling a prehistoric monster” had slithered across the road in front of their vehicle with a sheep in its mouth. A rash of other sightings followed, sparking a worldwide craze.
The Colonel, who had been fascinated since boyhood by cryptozoology, and sea serpents in particular, came down with a full-blown case of “Nessie Mania.” He followed the stories with increasing restlessness, clipping newspaper articles and making sketches based on the descriptions therein. He had retired from the military, and idleness did not suit him. He’d largely filled the void with big game hunting in Africa, but by then he found it unsatisfying. His trophy room was run of the mill. Who didn’t have a zebra skin hanging on the wall, a mounted rhinoceros head, or an elephant foot umbrella stand? Even the posed, snarling lion was passé.
When the first published photograph of the monster, taken by a man named Hugh Gray, was denounced by skeptics as being the blurred image of a swimming dog, the Colonel was so incensed he announced he was going to Scotland to prove the monster’s existence personally.
He prevailed upon the hospitality of his second cousin, the Laird of Craig Gairbh, whose estate was near the shores of the loch, and in a matter of weeks had taken multiple photographs that showed the curved neck and head of a sea serpent emerging from the water.
The pictures were published to widespread acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, and the Colonel’s triumphant return to the United States was marked with great fanfare. Reporters flocked to the house, stories ran in all the major newspapers, and he was generally regarded as a hero. He took to wearing estate tweeds around town, which made him instantly recognizable as the celebrity he was, and joked, in a faux British accent, that his only regret was not being able to mount the head in his trophy room, explaining that since Scotland Yard itself had requested he not harm the beast, it would have been in bad form to do so. The height of the frenzy was when he appeared in a newsreel that played before It Happened One Night, the biggest movie of the year.
Like Icarus, he flew too close to the sun. It wasn’t long before the Daily Mail published an article suggesting that the size of the wake was wrong and making the scandalous accusation that the Colonel had photographed a floating model. Next came allegations of photographic trickery—so-called experts claimed the photographs had been touched up and then rephotographed, citing slightly different angles and shadows, variations in the reflections. Because the Colonel had processed his own film, he was unable to defend himself.
The Colonel swore by the veracity of his photos and expressed outrage that his honor was being called into question precisely because he’d been honorable enough to defer to the request from Scotland Yard. If he’d just gone ahead and shot the beast—and he’d brought his elephant rifle with him for that very purpose—no one would be able to deny his claims.
The final nail in the coffin of public opinion was when Marmaduke Wetherell, a big game hunter who had been on safari with the Colonel several times, arrived at the loch with a cadre of reporters declaring that he was going to prove once and for all that the monster existed, and then promptly falsified monster tracks using an ashtray made from the foot of a hippo—a hippo that the Colonel himself had taken down in Rhodesia.
Reporters and their impudent questions were no longer welcome. The Colonel gave up his tweeds and his accent. The sketches and newspaper clippings, so carefully glued into Moroccan leather scrapbooks, disappeared. By the time I came into Ellis’s life, the subject was taboo, and preserving the Colonel’s dignity paramount.
Of course, what was taboo to the rest of the world was anything but to our little trio, especially when the Colonel was acting particularly accusatory about Ellis’s inability to serve.
It was Hank who came up with the idea of us finding the monster ourselves. It was a brilliant mechanism for blowing off steam that allowed Ellis to poke merciless fun at the Colonel, imagine himself triumphing where his father had failed, while simultaneously proving that he was as red-blooded as any man at the Front. It was a harmless fantasy, a whimsy we trotted out and embellished regularly, usually at the end of a long night of drinking, but never within anyone else’s earshot—at least, not before the New Year’s Eve party.
—
Ellis swallowed loudly beside me. My mother-in-law remained frozen to her seat, her fingers and mouth still open, the crystal sherry glass in shards at her feet.
The Colonel’s face was tinged with blue, like the skin of a ripe plum, and for a moment I thought he might be having a stroke. He lifted a quivering finger and pointed at the door.
“Get out,” he said in a strange, hollow voice. “Pemberton will send your things.”
Ellis shook his head in confusion. “What do you mean? To where?”
The Colonel turned his back to us, resting one elbow on the mantel, posing.
“To where?” Ellis asked with increasing desperation. “Where are we supposed to go?”
The Colonel’s stiff back and complete lack of response made it clear that wherever we went, it was of no concern to him.