My Fic: Inspector Littlejohn: Gen
Aug. 23rd, 2019 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stonepicnicking_okapiTitle: Ladies' Hats
Fandom: Inspector Littlejohn (George Bellairs)
Length: 600
Rating: Gen
100 Fandoms Prompt: 042. Mean.
Notes: Inspired by this quote from The Case of the Demented Spiv (1949): Littlejohn prided himself a bit on his taste in ladies’ hats. This one took the biscuit.
Summary: No one knew that Inspector Littlejohn of Scotland Yard prided himself on his taste in ladies’ hats, and if they had known, no one would’ve suspected the origins of his taste or his pride.
No one knew that Inspector Littlejohn of Scotland Yard prided himself on his taste in ladies’ hats, and if they had known, no one would’ve suspected the origins of his taste or his pride.
As a boy, Littlejohn had spent many a pleasant afternoon with his Aunt Jane in her millinery shop.
It was this aunt, his favourite aunt, who had shown him what could be made with just a few pieces of material and a certain amount of skill.
A hat was much like a case, Littlejohn mused much later in life; there were the disparate bits, clues like ribbon, witnesses like felt, and the detective’s own intellect and hard work like the glue that held it all together to form a dainty, diminutive masterpiece, a crown.
Watching his aunt at her careful work, Littlejohn discovered the secret of, and appreciation for, making things smooth, making things neat, leaving no loose ends, no frayed edges.
It was also through Aunt Jane’s instruction and those afternoons in her shop that Littlejohn had learned what kind of hat suited what kind of lady. This fashion sense, rare among boys at all and developed at so tender age in Littlejohn’s case, was how he’d known at a glance that the widowed Mrs. Barrow’s pillbox hat, elongating an already long face, was all wrong for her as well as the fact that there was high probability that the wearer was as absurd as her headpiece.
But back to Aunt Jane.
Aunt Jane had not just taught her young nephew how to make hats and how to sell them, she had also taught him what hats meant.
What did it mean when a lady was looking for a new hat? What did it mean when she was wearing one that she couldn’t afford? What did it mean when she was given one? Or having her old hat dyed a new colour or a new ribbon put on? What did the stains on a hat to be cleaned say about where a lady lived and how she lived?
Littlejohn hadn’t realised it at the time, but Aunt Jane was, in her way, making him into a first-rate detective. And she was, in fact, herself a first-rate psychologist long before the term was in common use.
She would whisper her impressions to him after the shop bell had jangled and the customer had vacated the premises. She would also test him on his powers of observation and deduction.
She never talked to him like a child, but she never kept him a minute more than his boyishly limited supply of patience would endure. She would send him on his way at the first sign of boredom or restlessness.
But Littlejohn liked her shop. It was quiet and cool and smelled nice. And there were interesting things about like pinking shears. And he could think about things that were interesting to him.
In his professional career as a police officer, Littlejohn’s knowledge of ladies’ hats had been useful, mostly for sizing up suspects and witnesses, but occasionally as actual clues. And once it had even prevented an innocent woman from being hanged.
After the last, he’d rushed to his old aunt’s bedside to tell her the news. The look of pride on her face was one of his most precious memories.
Aunt Jane’s wisdom meant a great deal to Littlejohn, even before it helped him attract the attention of the future Mrs. Littlejohn and know she was the one for him.
A notion absurd as Mrs. Barrow’s pillbox, but to Littlejohn, ladies’ hats meant a great deal.
Fandom: Inspector Littlejohn (George Bellairs)
Length: 600
Rating: Gen
100 Fandoms Prompt: 042. Mean.
Notes: Inspired by this quote from The Case of the Demented Spiv (1949): Littlejohn prided himself a bit on his taste in ladies’ hats. This one took the biscuit.
Summary: No one knew that Inspector Littlejohn of Scotland Yard prided himself on his taste in ladies’ hats, and if they had known, no one would’ve suspected the origins of his taste or his pride.
No one knew that Inspector Littlejohn of Scotland Yard prided himself on his taste in ladies’ hats, and if they had known, no one would’ve suspected the origins of his taste or his pride.
As a boy, Littlejohn had spent many a pleasant afternoon with his Aunt Jane in her millinery shop.
It was this aunt, his favourite aunt, who had shown him what could be made with just a few pieces of material and a certain amount of skill.
A hat was much like a case, Littlejohn mused much later in life; there were the disparate bits, clues like ribbon, witnesses like felt, and the detective’s own intellect and hard work like the glue that held it all together to form a dainty, diminutive masterpiece, a crown.
Watching his aunt at her careful work, Littlejohn discovered the secret of, and appreciation for, making things smooth, making things neat, leaving no loose ends, no frayed edges.
It was also through Aunt Jane’s instruction and those afternoons in her shop that Littlejohn had learned what kind of hat suited what kind of lady. This fashion sense, rare among boys at all and developed at so tender age in Littlejohn’s case, was how he’d known at a glance that the widowed Mrs. Barrow’s pillbox hat, elongating an already long face, was all wrong for her as well as the fact that there was high probability that the wearer was as absurd as her headpiece.
But back to Aunt Jane.
Aunt Jane had not just taught her young nephew how to make hats and how to sell them, she had also taught him what hats meant.
What did it mean when a lady was looking for a new hat? What did it mean when she was wearing one that she couldn’t afford? What did it mean when she was given one? Or having her old hat dyed a new colour or a new ribbon put on? What did the stains on a hat to be cleaned say about where a lady lived and how she lived?
Littlejohn hadn’t realised it at the time, but Aunt Jane was, in her way, making him into a first-rate detective. And she was, in fact, herself a first-rate psychologist long before the term was in common use.
She would whisper her impressions to him after the shop bell had jangled and the customer had vacated the premises. She would also test him on his powers of observation and deduction.
She never talked to him like a child, but she never kept him a minute more than his boyishly limited supply of patience would endure. She would send him on his way at the first sign of boredom or restlessness.
But Littlejohn liked her shop. It was quiet and cool and smelled nice. And there were interesting things about like pinking shears. And he could think about things that were interesting to him.
In his professional career as a police officer, Littlejohn’s knowledge of ladies’ hats had been useful, mostly for sizing up suspects and witnesses, but occasionally as actual clues. And once it had even prevented an innocent woman from being hanged.
After the last, he’d rushed to his old aunt’s bedside to tell her the news. The look of pride on her face was one of his most precious memories.
Aunt Jane’s wisdom meant a great deal to Littlejohn, even before it helped him attract the attention of the future Mrs. Littlejohn and know she was the one for him.
A notion absurd as Mrs. Barrow’s pillbox, but to Littlejohn, ladies’ hats meant a great deal.
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