Within minutes the photographer Romuald Rat and his driver Stéphane Darmon arrived at the scene. Rat pulled open the door and felt Diana’s pulse to see if she was alive. ‘I’m here,’ he said in English, ‘be cool.’ Moments later an off-duty doctor, Frédéric Maillez, stopped to help – it was the third time that he had been the first doctor at the scene of a serious car smash. After surveying the four passengers he raced back to his white Ford Fiesta and pulled out the only piece of medical equipment he had with him, an Ambu – a mask attached to a portable self-inflating oxygen bottle – which he tried to place over Diana’s nose and mouth. By now her head was slumped forward, her eyes open but glassy. The signs looked bad, but as her external injuries appeared slight, Maillez thought she would survive.
But internally Diana had suffered from ‘grave haemorrhagic shock’, which meant, in layman’s terms, that her chest and lung cavity were rapidly filling with blood. The force of the impact had ripped the vital pulmonary artery from her heart – a common cause of fatalities in aircraft crashes. This injury caused her heart to spasm and she suffered several huge heart attacks.
As Diana’s life began to ebb away, the still-smoking Mercedes was by now surrounded by photographers, the doctor’s frantic efforts to resuscitate the Princess illuminated by an explosion of flashlights. ‘It was like a scene out of the annals of Hell,’ recollected Dorzée. By now, in London, newspaper executives, with the first pictures of the stricken Princess on their desks, were waiting for news of her condition. If she lived, the shots went on the front page. If she died these last pictures would never be spoken of again. Or, at least, that is what they hoped.
For the next three hours, a medical team strove to save the Princess and Trevor Rees-Jones. It took until 1.30 a.m. for the fire service to carefully cut both victims from the crushed car. Diana was on artificial respiration, her blood pressure very low and she had already suffered major cardiac arrest. The ambulance, surrounded by a police escort, crawled the 3.8 kilometres to the Pitié-Salpétrière hospital, stopping once while the doctor tried to prevent a second cardiac arrest. It was not until two in the morning that the Princess arrived at the hospital, where two surgeons, Bruno Riou and Dr Alain Pavie, and their team were waiting.
As the team worked frantically to save her, using electric paddles and manual resuscitation to shock her heart back to life, the British Ambassador, Sir Michael Jay, and the French Interior Minister, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, stood outside the operating theatre, anxious to relay any news to Balmoral, where the Queen and the rest of the royal family, including Prince Charles and his sons, were staying.
When Sir Michael first contacted the Queen’s Scottish retreat, her deputy private secretary, Sir Robin Janvrin, was uncomprehending; he had not even been aware that the Princess was in Paris. He quickly threw on some clothes and went up to the ‘big house’ to confer with the Queen and the Prince of Wales. The Queen and Charles, still in their dressing gowns and slippers, held a brief meeting in the Prince’s sitting room. They decided to let the boys sleep until the situation became clearer, although they took the precaution of quietly removing the radios from their bedrooms and the television from the nursery in case they inadvertently woke. Then Prince Charles telephoned Camilla Parker Bowles in Gloucestershire to let her know about the accident, after which he rang his deputy private secretary, Mark Bolland, in London to glean more news. For once, Bolland, who was now being contacted by national newspaper editors, was as much in the dark as his royal boss.
Meanwhile, the police at Balmoral contacted Diana’s driver, Colin Tebbutt, at his home, having heard that Diana’s chauffeur had died in the accident and being concerned that he was the victim. After Tebbutt had reassured them of his safety, he raced to Kensington Palace where he joined the chain-smoking comptroller Michael Gibbins, Diana’s secretary, Jackie Allen, and Paul Burrell in the office. Diana’s butler had earlier been woken by Lucia Flecha de Lima who had called from Washington, where, having seen the CNN report on the accident, she had been frantically and unsuccessfully calling the Princess’s mobile phone, as had Sarah, Duchess of York, who was on holiday in Italy. While Lucia gave up and phoned the butler, Fergie considered hiring a private aircraft and heading for Paris.
At that stage, news reports were still saying that the Princess was alive, and Tebbutt began looking into hiring an air ambulance to fly her home. The first news reports, flashed around the world at two o’clock in the morning British Summer Time, were relatively optimistic as to the condition of the Princess, though they revealed that Dodi had died. In the initial confusion, it was stated that Diana had only sustained minor injuries, probably a broken arm; one eyewitness account was quoted as saying that she had walked unaided from the scene of the crash.
This gave short-lived hope to her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, sitting alone in front of the television, smoking cigarette after cigarette and desperately praying that her youngest daughter was safe. She had been woken by her friend, Janey Milne, who had telephoned her at her cottage on the isle of Seil after seeing a news flash on Sky Television. After she had made herself a cup of tea, Mrs Shand Kydd packed what she hoped were ‘dignified clothes’ into a suitcase in preparation for a hospital visit to see a daughter with whom she had not spoken for six months. ‘It seemed natural to go to my wounded child,’ she said later. All the while, she tried to contact her other daughters, Jane, who was on holiday in Norfolk, and Sarah, at home in Lincolnshire. Both phones were continually engaged. After speaking briefly to her son, Charles, in South Africa, Mrs Shand Kydd eventually heard from Jane. The news was not good. It seemed that Diana was severely brain-damaged and Dodi was dead. A few minutes later she received the dreadful news that her daughter was dead. ‘I knew of her death an hour before the news was given out. Protocol was such that heads of state had to be informed before it was made public. So I was left in an amazing, stunning situation of having an hour to wait, knowing she was dead and unable to transmit this news or ask for help of a friend.’
For hours she waited for a phone call or fax from Prince Charles. ‘Why hasn’t he rung? What is going on?’ she asked aloud, ready and willing to fly to Paris if she was asked. According to her, that call never came. She added, ‘I didn’t go to Paris to bring Diana home to London because I wasn’t asked.’ It reawoke an enduring pain for her – that she had never seen or held her son John, the child born before Diana, who had died when only a few hours old: ‘It really seems ironic to me that having buried two children, for entirely different reasons, I did not see or touch or hold them when they were dead.’ Since her daughters flew to Paris, it seems odd that they, rather than the royal family, did not make arrangements for their mother to be with them.
The only fragment of solace at this anguished time was that before Diana was pronounced dead at 3 a.m. British time, the British Ambassador had requested the services of a French priest to deliver the last rites, known as extreme unction, to her daughter. Father Yves Clochard-Bossuet, who lived nearby, was escorted to the hospital where he was taken to the Princess’s side: ‘I prayed for her soul. All I could think of was the sadness of this young woman dying when she had everything to live for.’ For the next four hours he sat with her so that she would not be alone. It was a gesture from a stranger that the Princess, who had held the hands of so many as they made their last journey, would have appreciated.
She would have appreciated too the confusion that reigned at Balmoral. As a grief-stricken Mohamed Fayed, who had flown to Paris in his private jet, entered a Paris mortuary to identify and claim his son, the royal family remained in Scotland, considering how to proceed. Apart from the link with her boys, as far as the royal family was concerned Diana was a figure from the past. She had not been present at any family gatherings, at Windsor Castle, Sandringham or Balmoral, for several years and had last seen the Queen at William’s confirmation in March, some five months before. By a supreme and tragic irony, the family that cast her out just as she was washing her hands of them we
re now obliged to repossess her. As Dave Griffin, Princess Margaret’s chauffeur, absorbed the news of Diana’s death he could not help but reflect on the portentous words of his employer a few months before: ‘Poor Lilibet and Charles have done everything they can to get rid of the wretched girl, but she just won’t go.’
Even before dawn had broken, the full seriousness of the situation was beginning to sink in. ‘They’re all going to blame me, aren’t they?’ Prince Charles said to anyone who would listen. ‘What do I do, what does this mean?’ The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, at home in his Sedgefield constituency in County Durham, saw far beyond his personal feelings, telling his aide, Alastair Campbell, ‘This is going to unleash grief like no one has ever seen anywhere in the world.’
While Blair had been party to the decision to let the boys sleep through the night, it was their father who had the task of breaking the news that their mother was dead. At 7.15 in the morning, a haggard Prince Charles, who had spent some time walking around the Balmoral grounds alone with his thoughts, went with a heavy heart to tell his sons about their mother. ‘I knew something was wrong,’ William reportedly said. ‘I kept waking up all night.’ His father explained that he had to fly to Paris and that the boys would stay at Balmoral with their grandparents. ‘Thank goodness we’re all together, we can look after them,’ was the immediate response of the Queen Mother when she was told the news.
A symbol of stoicism and imperturbable calm, the Queen Mother, like the rest of the royal family, instinctively responded to the tragedy by maintaining the rhythm and routine of everyday life. Her mood, according to a courtier, was ‘steely’. The Sunday service at Crathie church was scheduled for later that morning and no one saw any good reason to cancel it. The boys were persuaded that, if they attended, they might find it more consoling to be with the rest of the family than inside Balmoral Castle. However, the service, conducted by a Church of Scotland minister, was remarkable for the fact that no mention was made of the Princess, causing Prince Harry to ask, ‘Are you sure Mummy is dead?’ Apart from black ties, the royal family gave no outward sign that this was anything other than a routine church service, while the minister stuck to his prepared sermon about moving house, including jokes about the Scottish comedian, Billy Connolly. Even The Times was moved to remark ‘No Mention of Accident’. It was the start of a growing chorus of criticism.
Buckingham Palace issued a bleak eight-word statement expressing ‘shock’ at the news, and it was left to the Prime Minister to reflect on what Diana meant to the nation. ‘They liked her, they loved her, they regarded her as one of the people. She was the People’s Princess and that is how she will stay, how she will remain in all our hearts and memories for ever,’ he said that morning.
While the Prince worried about how Diana’s death would reflect upon him, and the rest of the royal family maintained their traditional reserve in the face of disaster, Diana’s butler, Paul Burrell, was inconsolable. ‘I must go to her, I must go to her,’ he repeated, barely able to speak coherently. Diana’s comptroller, Michael Gibbins, agreed to let him travel to Paris but on the proviso that he was accompanied by the Princess’s driver, Colin Tebbutt. ‘I want you to be my eyes and ears,’ Gibbins told Tebbutt, not only to watch over the rapidly disintegrating Burrell, but also any manoeuvrings by the other royal households.
They managed to catch the 6.30 a.m. British Airways flight to Paris, the plane so full that Prince Charles’s bodyguard, Ian von Heinz, had to sit in the jump seat. On their arrival in Paris, Colin Tebbutt, Paul Burrell and Ian von Heinz were met by the British Ambassador, Sir Michael Jay, on the Embassy steps. ‘Am I glad to see you,’ he said in greeting, aware that this unlikely trio were the first representatives of the royal family to arrive on French soil. After a brief meeting in the Embassy boardroom, Tebbutt headed for the Ritz Hotel to pick up Diana’s belongings only to discover to his consternation that Mohamed Fayed had taken Diana’s luggage back to London with him in his private jet. When he returned to the Embassy with the news that they had none of her clothes to dress her in, the Ambassador’s wife, Sylvia Jay, who was roughly the same size as Diana, came to the rescue and popped next door to the ambassadorial residence to pick out some clothes from her wardrobe. Together they chose a black cocktail dress with a shawl-collar and a pair of black shoes for the Princess.
Finally they arrived at the hospital to find a scene of controlled chaos. Outside, dozens of media and public milled around, while in the first-floor corridor of the freshly painted Gaston Cordier wing, the British Consul-General, Keith Moss, was valiantly manning a specially installed bank of phones. As Moss fielded the calls, Tebbutt, von Heinz and Burrell were led to the hospital room set aside for the Princess. When they entered they saw Diana. She was lying on a hospital bed under a white sheet. It simply looked as though she was asleep. Paul Burrell broke down, sobbing and crying, ‘Get up! Get up!’ Years of police work had taught Tebbutt and von Heinz to be more detached, to focus on the practical rather than emotional, but Burrell was so overwrought that Tebbutt feared that if he saw the scratches on one side of her face he would collapse completely.
A fan in the room turned slowly and a light breeze stirred a wisp of hair lying across her forehead as though wafted by a breath from Diana’s lips. It seemed almost like a shiver of life. At this unnerving sight, Paul Burrell crumbled completely and was escorted outside for counselling by Martin Draper, an English clergyman who had arrived to relieve Father Clochard-Bossuet.
With the day promising to be warm and humid, and with photographers already looking for vantage points to take pictures of the morbid scene, Tebbutt ordered blankets to be draped over the windows and an air-conditioning unit to keep the room cool.
While Burrell composed himself, before fetching Mrs Jay’s black dress and shoes for the Princess, Tebbutt and von Heinz put Diana in the care of two gowned and masked French undertakers who worked efficiently and discreetly to make the Princess ready for her journey home. While the undertakers were doing this, Prince Charles telephoned the hospital from Balmoral to find out the latest situation and to pass on his condolences to the distraught butler. ‘What is happening? What is going on?’ he wanted to know.
Meanwhile in Paris, there came the most bizarre sight of the day – the entrance of the men from the royal funeral directors, Levertons, who marched down the corridor in full frock-coats carrying a special lead-lined custom coffin and a royal standard, which Burrell and the others had not thought to bring with them. There was concern that the British undertakers, distinguished by their royal appointment and their more than two centuries of business (the firm was established in 1789, the year the French Revolution broke out) would be aggrieved at not having prepared the Princess’s body themselves. But they examined the handiwork of their French counterparts and gave their approval. The only doubt concerned Diana’s hair. No one quite knew what had been her latest style so Burrell went into the room to help with the final arrangements before the Prince of Wales and Diana’s sisters, Jane and Sarah, arrived. A picture of the boys found in her purse was carefully placed in her hands, as too were rosary beads, a much treasured gift from Mother Teresa of Calcutta who died less than a week later.
By now most of the Princess’s jewellery had been recovered from the crash site and brought to the hospital, and her necklace, bracelet and watch were put on her, which helped make her look less stark. Only one earring had been found – the second was discovered later, embedded in the dashboard of the Mercedes.
Late in the afternoon, Prince Charles arrived at the hospital with Diana’s sisters, to be met by the French President, Jacques Chirac, and other dignitaries, who escorted the royal party to pay their respects to the Princess. Outside her room, Sarah and Jane gave Paul Burrell a hug, while the Prince of Wales shook Colin Tebbutt’s hand and thanked him for ‘looking after the fort’. They spent some minutes privately with the Princess, calling for the priest to lead them in prayer. Then the trio emerged, visibly distressed, to take Di
ana home. Before leaving they thanked the medical staff who had worked in vain to save the Princess. ‘You sensed Prince Charles had the weight of the world on his shoulders,’ Thierry Meresse, the director of communications, remarked later. ‘He was very, very, very upset.’
The nurse who was present there, however, was disconcerted by the fact that when Prince Charles talked to her, he seemed curiously obsessive about the missing earring. ‘It is absolutely essential that she is wearing both earrings. She can’t leave like that,’ he insisted. It was the second time that day that hospital staff had noticed the royal family’s concern about detail and jewellery. Earlier they had received a telephone call from the Queen’s senior courtiers on the special ‘Balmoral hotline’ enquiring as to the whereabouts of Diana’s jewellery and asking for its safe return. After discussions with the Consul-General, Meresse explained that medical staff at the crash site had been more concerned about the Princess’s condition than her jewellery. (When the Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, died in 2002, the Queen visited Kensington Palace herself to pick up her jewellery.)
The preoccupation with the protocol surrounding her jewellery was matched by concern about the form her funeral should take, discussions that foreshadowed and exposed the future battles for Diana’s memory that would end in Number One Court at the Old Bailey five years later. At first glance, the plan to repatriate Diana was coherent, considered and uncontroversial. Once Diana’s death had been confirmed and announced at 5.45 a.m. British time by the French doctors and the British Ambassador, Operation Overlord, a scheme drawn up in the 1980s to bring back a royal body from abroad, went into action. Under the plan every member of the royal family has a codename, taken from a bridge – for the Queen Mother it was Tay Bridge, for the Queen it is London Bridge, Prince Philip is Forth Bridge and Prince Charles Menai Bridge. For an organization so reliant on protocol, these codenames, according to Dickie Arbiter, have an elegiac explanation – the ‘bridge between life and death’. Diana, however, being young and disengaged from the royal family, had no codename.
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