Crossword-Solution: BLOODSTAINS 11 letters, 3 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 14

There were a number of bloodstains on them, not one of them larger in size than a pea, some almost invisible.

The chief facts pointing to Butler's guilt were: his conversation with Mallard and Bain previous to the crime; his demeanour after it; his departure from Dunedin; the removal of his moustache and the soles of his boots; his change of clothes and the bloodstains found upon them, added to which was his apparent inability to account for his movements on the night in question.

Butler had explained the bloodstains on his clothes as smears that had come from scratches on his hands, caused by contact with bushes.

Butler was able to show by the position of the bloodstains on the clothes that such an explanation was open to considerable doubt.

Where medical gentlemen had made observations, seen with their own eyes, the direct inference might be highly trustworthy, but, when they proceeded to draw further inferences, they might be in danger of looking at facts through the spectacles of theory; "we know that people do that in other things besides science--politics, religion, and so forth." Taking the Crown evidence, at its strongest, there was a missing link; did the evidence of the bloodstains supply it? These bloodstains were almost invisible.