Their first concern, however, was to discover just how badly injured Diana was. Not too badly, they were told – first reports were that she had walked away from the twisted wreckage of the Mercedes virtually unscathed. Prince Charles resolved to travel immediately to France to be at his ex-wife’s side. It was as a flight was being arranged that Robin Janvrin took the call from Paris informing him that the princess was dead. He immediately rang up to Charles and said: ‘Sir, I am very sorry to have to tell you that I’ve just had the ambassador on the phone. The princess died a short time ago.’

The Queen was bewildered and caught up by the mood of suspicion as to what had caused the accident. Her first comment, upon being told of Diana’s death, was to say: ‘Someone must have greased the brakes.’ It was an extraordinary remark for the Queen to make and it astounded her staff when they came to hear of it, which most had by the time the dawn broke over Balmoral’s wooded hills. What she was most probably referring to was the possibility, long mooted, that one of Harrods owner Mohamed Al-Fayed’s many enemies had sworn to get him and had now contrived the killing of his eldest son and the princess he was urging Dodi to marry. The Queen, however, neither repeated nor offered any explanation for her comment, and in the absence of any clarification, her staff chose to see it as an indication of just how shaken she had been by the turbulence of Diana’s life and sudden death.

Nor was she the only one. The whole royal apparatus was thrown into disorder by the news of the crash. Viewed through the opaque window of deference which protected the royal family from the scrutiny of outsiders, the royal household appears a dull but smoothly run business which compensates for its lack of imagination with the security of routine. Schedules are prepared months and sometimes years in advance, and there is not a day when the senior members of the family it serves do not know where they are supposed to be or what they are supposed to be doing, right up to and including the moment of death.