The prisoner was a well-built man with bloodshot eyes. An ugly man, one you wouldn't forget in a hurry - and that was an important point. The prosecution intended to call four witnesses who hadn't forgotten him and who had seen him hurrying away from the little red house in Northwood Street.
At two o'clock in the morning Mrs Salmon, who lived at 15 Northwood Street, had been unable to sleep. She heard a door shut and so she went to the window and saw Adams (the accused) on the steps of the victim's house. He had just come out and he was wearing gloves. Before he moved away, he had looked up - at the window.
Henry MacDougall, who had been driving home late, nearly ran over Adams at the corner of Northwood Street because he was walking in the middle of the road, looking dazed. And old Mr Wheeler, who lived next door to Mrs Parker, at number 12, and was woken up by a noise and got up and looked out of the window, just as Mrs Salmon had done, saw Adams's back and, as he turned, those bloodshot eyes. In laurel Avenue he had been seen by yet another witness.