The Murder of Princess Diana by Noel Botham

Palace, Diana was photographed in tears—tears of rage. In great distress, she made the point vigorously to Charles in their short drive to Kensington Palace, where she locked herself in the bathroom, still in tears. He was unmoved by her misery and went out, leaving the young princes to slide paper hankies under the bathroom door to their mother.
    Early in 1991, Diana was forced to take the boys skiing alone because at the last moment Charles had pleaded an urgent need to prepare several speeches for forthcoming engagements. He chose to ignore heavy criticism both from palace advisers —who still hoped to project an image of family togetherness—and the press. He claimed duty had to take precedence, but in reality he was meeting with Camilla in Scotland, having been secretly supported by the Queen Mother who offered them the use of Birkhall, her house on the Balmoral Estate.
    In private, all the royal women tended to sympathize with Prince Charles over Diana’s refusal to be compliant about Camilla. Royal men were traditionally entitled to enjoy their mistresses without the meddlesome and irksome interference or emotional opposition of their wives. Throughout this period Charles and his father, Prince Philip, found themselves in rare agreement, and were resolute in their shared belief that their bitterness over Diana’s recalcitrance was utterly justified. It was the princess, they maintained, who was being unreasonable in her refusal to accept the normality of Charles’s affair with Camilla.
    Diana’s visit to Lech in January, when the boys had their first skiing lessons, had not gone by without one interesting relationship developing—that between Diana and her cousin by marriage. Viscount Linley—Princess Margaret’s son—was then single and, at twenty-nine, just four months younger than the Princess of Wales. He was there ostensibly as a chaperone, and stayed with Diana and the two princes. She was starved of affection and desperately missing James Hewitt, who was fighting with his regiment in the Gulf War.
    Charles, a fanatical skier himself, was annoyed when he learned that Harry had already mastered the art of downhill skiing and that he had missed this experience in his adventurous young son’s development. He was also said to have been white-lipped with fury when told of the scurrilous rumors emanating from Lech which featured suggestions of provocative nighttime activities involving Viscount Linley and his wife. I am told that his cousin’s denials that anything untoward had taken place were not in themselves sufficient to calm his temper. Nor did they prevent the rumors from circulating. Charles was convinced Diana and his cousin had become lovers and denounced them, loudly, to his closest companions.
    The mere thought of such scandalous tales bursting into the public domain spread panic around the corridors of the twin palaces. At the trial of butler Paul Burrell, the court was about to hear revelations about Diana’s close bond with David Linley when the case collapsed. Linley did become extremely close to the princess during the time they stayed together in Lech—and throughout 1991—and wrote many intimate letters to his “Darling Diana.” Only one letter survived. The others are believed to have been shredded by Diana’s mother, Frances Shand-Kydd, on the day after her daughter’s death in 1997.
    The one intact letter was seized at Burrell’s home in Cheshire during a police raid in January 2001. It had been with her other “Crown Jewels.” The jury was invited to read the letter themselves in an attempt to prevent the contents, which were said to be extremely frank, being disclosed to the public. It was known, however, that the letter ended with the endearment, “masses of love from David.”
    Had the case not collapsed it is almost certain that the letter’s contents, and possibly those of other letters which were understood to be equally frank, would have been revealed in open court