Lily Crabtree

In the short story Sing a Song of Sixpence, Lily Crabtree was an old lady who lived comfortably with some relatives in a house in Chelsea. Some three weeks before the events in the story, she had been bludgeoned to death in her sitting room by a paperweight. The police could not solve the case as no one appeared to have come to the house, and among the residents, no one appeared to have the opportunity.

Miss Crabtree was extremely thrifty and economical. Instead of keeping money in a bank which she could draw on at will, she made a peculiar arrangement with her lawyer to limit her expenditure. The lawyer was intstructed to release three hundred pounds every three months in cash which she would collect in person. However, her household expenditure invariably fell far short of three hundred pounds over three months, even accounting for the fact that she was charitable and often sent five pound notes away to needy friends and relatives. Beggars who came to the door always got something from her.

Miss Crabtree, being unmarried, lived in her house with four relatives who she supported with her money. There was Magdalen Vaughan and her twin brother Matthew, grand children of her sister, and the son of her brother William Crabtree with his wife Emily. When Miss Crabtree died, her estate came to eighty thousand pounds, to be divided equally among the four relatives.

The size of her estate was a surprise to her relatives although they would have suspected that she was well off. They were thus suspects in her murder but according to the testimony of the long time maid Martha, none of them had the opportunity.

Miss Crabtree was a fussy and nitpicky person who had conservative views. On the day of her death, she had argued with Magdalen when she wanted to become a mannequin (a tailor's model). Miss Crabtree had also chided Martha for a range of trivial household shortcomings: how Emily Crabtree was nonsensical for not liking margarine (instead of the more expensive butter), how the fishmonger had sent haddocks instead of whitings. She also complained that one of the six pences which Martha had received as change was bad--it was one of the new designs with oak leaves. Presumably she did not trust new things and thought it could not be genuine.

It was this six pence with the new design which was the clue to how she had been killed.