story. Furious over this, she tells the judge in her divorce case that Bates paid her off to consent to it. The judge voids the divorce decree, with the result that Vera and John are still legally married. Mr Bates goes to London to confront her and returns to Downton with a large scratch on his face, telling Anna that their meeting went terribly. The next day, Vera is found dead from ingestion of rat poison. The police are convinced that Bates murdered her and he is convicted and sentenced to death, before the sentence is commuted to life in prison. While John is in prison, Anna is able to track down a neighbour of Vera's who saw her on the day of her death. She tells Anna that she remembers Vera had dried food under her fingernails, meaning that Vera made the pie herself knowing that her husband would be implicated for murder. The neighbour also stated that she had seen Vera walking down the street when the gas lights had come on (she said they made a sort of "halo" around Vera's head), which would have been when Bates was already on his way back home. Bates is then released from prison due to the neighbour's statement. Mr Mason Mr Albert Mason (played by Paul Copley) is the father of William, the Downton footman who died of injuries received in the Great War. In 1913, Mason's wife dies of a heart attack leaving him on his own on their farm. Mr Mason becomes father-in-law to Daisy when she marries his son on his deathbed. After William's death in 1918, Mr Mason sometimes calls at Downton to speak to Daisy, believing that she loved William as much as he did. Although Daisy finds this awkward at first, after he tells Daisy that William thought she was special and that his father would have no children left after his own death, their relationship changes and becomes akin to that of father and daughter. In 1920, he expresses his wish to name Daisy his sole heir, and asks her to come live at the farm so he may teach her how to run it. When Daisy visits him again in 1922, she is trying to avoid Alfred, who is saying his final goodbyes at the house. But Mr Mason insists to Daisy she has to say goodbye to him properly, and