Work Text:
Satan, looking extremely dapper in a Harris Tweed Inverness cape and deerstalker hat, thoughtfully smoked his calabash pipe and frowned.
"This is a mystery," he stated dismissively, "that is barely worthy of my attention."
Leviathan, relishing his role as faithful sidekick exclaimed, "But Holmes, surely you cannot have deduced the culprit with a mere glance!"
"Fear not Watson, I shall elucidate," said Satan, adopting a lecturing tone and pedagogical expression that Lucifer would have envied.
"We know it wasn't Beel who ate all the shortbread fingers. The reason being that there are still chocolate biscuits and madeira cake remaining. Likewise we know it was not Belphie. If he had entered the kitchen, Beel would have followed closely behind and eaten all the snacks. It cannot have been Mammon who would have eaten the chocolate biscuits in preference as he is not fond of shortbread," here Satan lifted the lid on the biscuit tin and peered inside, helping himself to a chocolate biscuit. "It cannot have been Asmo as he was moaning about starting a new fad diet last night. You and I have been together all morning getting our costumes sorted out, therefore it can only have been Lucifer."
Self-righteously Satan straightened up, half a chocolate biscuit in one hand and his calabash pipe in the other. "Lucifer is the culprit," he declared dramatically. "He ate all the shortbread fingers. The bastard. He knows they are my favourite."
Frowning, Levi asked, "How can you be sure it wasn't Lord Diavolo or Barbatos? They were here too this morning."
Shaking his head Satan said, "It wasn't Barbatos. He'd have refilled the biscuit tin straight away. And I would have suspected Diavolo except for one thing."
Stepping to the side, Satan revealed his final clue. Three large bowls of water lay on the ground, neatly out of the way of regular foot traffic in the kitchen.
"Lucifer has put out water bowls for Cerberus. He brought his damn dog to work again today and I just know he shared my biscuits with his bloody dog! It's not the first time."
Levi bit his lip trying hard to stifle the laughter. Satan's face was flushed and for a moment there was an ominous green glow in his eyes as he wrestled back control of his Wrath.
"You know Satan, you're getting really good at this detective stuff," said Levi as they headed for the conference room. Satan and Levi were the first to enter for that morning's DFTC production meeting.
The Devildom Film and Television Corporation - the DFTC - was Diavolo's latest initiative to improve the cross-cultural relationship between the Mortal Realm and the Devildom. Everyone had so far been having a surprising amount of fun engaging with different types of storytelling and embracing a variety of genres.
Unsurprisingly it had grown quite competitive.
As they took their seats at the conference table Mammon, wearing a beige trenchcoat and a Borsalino fedora pulled low over his brow, whisked into the room, heading straight for the window. Surreptitiously he tweaked the venetian blinds and looked out into the street.
"Hmm. There's no-one followin' me." He sounded distinctly disappointed.
Mammon took a seat at the conference table, pulled out his hip flask of demonus and, putting his feet up on the table, proceeded to slouch down in his chair, sipping with nonchalant insouciance.
When Lucifer, his hair slicked back with brilliantine, entered the room, Mammon didn't straighten at all and simply muttered, "Of all the conference rooms in all the TV studios in all the world he had to walk into mine."
Lucifer gave him an urbane look, simply rolling his eyes as he replied, "Sam Spade? I know I've been busy with the studio and not been able to be at home as often, but what idiot let you watch Bogart films again? You're impossible to manage when you watch Bogart."
Raising his hip flask in a laconic salute Mammon gave a grin. "Here's lookin' at you, kid."
Sighing Lucifer sat at the table, pulling out his paperwork and laying out the documents he needed. Rather than his usual reading glasses, Lucifer lifted a monocle on a fine silver chain and polished it with his pocket handkerchief before placing it carefully at one eye.
Then Lucifer did something very surprising. As he read over the documents for the morning's meeting, he took a small silver case from his pocket, carefully removed a fussy little fake waxed moustache and firmly pressed it into place on his upper lip.
"Poirot?" asked Satan disdainfully. "Really? Agatha Christie is not a patch on Arthur Conan Doyle."
"Ahh," the smugly smiling Lucifer adopted a surprisingly authentic Belgian accent. "If you'd just exercise your little grey cells for a moment Satan, you'd know that wasn't true."
In fairness Satan had to admit Lucifer had a point. He did quite enjoy Agatha Christie novels. Deciding it was beneath him to reply, Satan contented himself with narrowing his eyes at his oldest brother, smirking a little as he imagined him dressed instead as Miss Marple.
It really was very amusing.
The door to the conference room opened again as Asmodeus breezed in. He was looking unusually modest and extraordinarily adorable in a cute little checkered skirt and yellow sweater combination.
Asmo made a point of brushing his long hair back from his face and tucking stray strands behind his ears in a careful move, designed to draw attention to his long reddish-blonde locks.
Mammon scowled at him and took another swig. "The dame walked into my office. She looked like trouble, dames always do."
"Philistine," frowned Asmo, poking his tongue out at him. "Nancy Drew is not a dame. You just don't appreciate Mortal Realm culture properly."
"Nice hair," commented Levi."Did you get your wig from Akuzon?"
"Of course not," boasted Asmo. "I'm committed to this role. Solomon fixed me up with a hair charm and it's perfect."
As Asmo took his seat the twins finally entered the conference room. Both were dressed in a practical yet stylish manner, Beelzebub in a charmingly tailored pantsuit and Belphegor in an attractive blue suit with a coordinated tie. They both had lanyards round their necks with plastic ID cards that read FBI.
Once everyone was seated at the table Lucifer adjusted his monocle and called the meeting to order.
"We're here to decide on the next crime drama series for the DFTC to produce," he began. "As you know, Diavolo feels we've now had enough practice in making shows for the local Devildom area and he wants to market this next series to the Mortal Realm."
Surveying his brothers with a critical eye, Lucifer gave a long suffering sigh and shook his head. "I can see the ongoing research you've all been doing into mortal crime drama has yielded . . . interesting . . . results."
"Whatever happened," said Belphie, "It was because of the aliens."
"Don't be silly Mulder," said Beel, shaking his head affectionately at his twin. "There's no such thing as aliens."
"Listen Scully," started Belphie, before Lucifer dropped his monocle, silencing them both with a look.
"I remember what happened last time," says Lucifer sternly. "If either of you mention anal probing again, there's going to be trouble."
At this point there was a knock on the door, followed by Barbatos' head, peeking past the jamb and into the room.
"Sorry to interrupt everyone," he started.
"Not at all," said Lucifer, his false moustache wiggling a little as he smiled. "How may we help?"
Barbatos stepped into the room, smiling apologetically. "I'm afraid I have some bad news. We cannot start a new crime drama yet. Lord Diavolo wishes to engage in further research before we begin."
There was a moment of silence followed by a riot of hubbub.
"But why?"
"We're all good to go! We look fantastic."
"I don't get it at all?"
Lucifer replaced his monocle once again and glared at them all which was enough to see the room drop into silence.
Taking a deep breath, Barbatos continued, "We've discovered a small, yet basic flaw in our general approach to crime drama. It seems we've had a fundamental misunderstanding of two quite important human concepts. "True Crime" and "method acting"."
With a grim face, Lucifer nodded, asking "So it's the question I raised? I was concerned we were running out of actors."
"Yes," confirmed Barbatos. "Apparently in the Mortal Realm, "True" Crime doesn't actually mean a crime must be committed in the course of making the program. Equally, despite the importance of method acting, humans don't actually require the actor playing the role of the corpse to die."
Everyone else at the table looked puzzled.
Finally Belphie asked, "Well, how do they investigate all the murders then? If no murders actually take place? Is it just pretend?"
Frowning Beel said, "Humans are just pretending to murder people. For fun. " He shook his head. "That's really disturbing."
"I know," agreed Asmo mournfully. "No commitment to their art at all."