The Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi Fayed inquest jury yesterday saw for themselves where the couple spent their last tender moments and, for the eighth time on the jurors’ two-day visit to Paris, the spot in the Alma tunnel where they died.

For the six women and five men, the inside of the Ritz Hotel in the Place Vendôme, owned by Mohamed Al Fayed, is already a familiar sight.

Last week, in Court 73 of the Royal Courts of Justice, they watched extensive closed-circuit television footage edited from hours of coverage by the hotel’s 41 security cameras.

Accompanied by Lord Justice Scott Baker and the hearing’s extensive team of lawyers, the jury began a 20-minute tour of the hotel with the one location that they had not previously seen. The Bar Vendôme – plush, chintzy and expensive – did not have a camera on the fateful night ten years ago, and only a record of the bar bills shows that Henri Paul, suddenly recalled to work at 10pm when he thought he had the rest of the night off, bought two glasses of Ricard before planning an escape route for his employer’s son and his high-profile companion.

Q&A: the Diana inquest

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Multimedia

• Video: Diana CCTV footage

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Background

• Separating fact from fiction in the great Diana conspiracy

• ‘Diana decision is yours alone’

• Inquest hears evidence Diana was on the Pill

• Jury duty with a Royal difference

• Was Diana’s death part of a secret plot?

Related Internet Links

• Coroner's inquest - Official Site

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They walked down the elegant and spacious main lobby where the cameras had caught Mr Paul, members of his security staff and the hotel’s night manager meeting and making telephone calls. The coroner pointed out the location of the closed-circuit television cameras that had filmed them.

They climbed the stairs to the first floor, the coroner leading them with his slow and stately gait, unlike Mr Paul, who was shown on the night bounding up two steps at a time. At the top they crowded into the small foyer of the Imperial Suite where the Princess and Mr Fayed had spent a private evening.

The cameras had caught Trevor Rees Jones and Kes Wingfield, two of the couple’s bodyguards, waiting outside the door and having discussions with Mr Paul. Yesterday a hotel security guard stood with arms folded outside the door of Room 101.

The jurors and lawyers then had to squeeze down the long narrow corridor, barely two metres wide, that formed the first part of the couple’s escape route to the back door.

About 50 people, including coroner, jury, lawyers and officials, constitute the court, which is the first English coroner’s court to sit in full session outside its own country.

The Princess and Mr Fayed, displaying intimate body language, had been seen descending to the ground floor in a service lift. Because of the numbers the court went down by the stairs to the service area with its plain tiled walls and floor, a world away from the opulence of the public rooms.

Here the cameras had shown the couple, holding hands and leaning in to each other, as they waited for the Mercedes to pull up in the Rue Cambon outside.

The court stepped into the street, noting the position of the cameras while they waited for their coach. “This will be the decoy coach,” Michael Mansfield, QC, joked as the unmarked vehicle pulled up at almost exactly the same spot as the Mercedes had done on the night of the fatal crash.

Back on board, the coroner explained to the jury that they would now drive three possible routes that Mr Paul could have taken from the hotel to Mr Fayed’s apartment, next to a branch of Cartier in the Rue Arsène Houssaye, a stone’s throw from the Arc de Triomphe.

First, they took the obvious route via the Place de la Concorde and the Champs Elysées. The coroner explained that it was geographically the most direct route but not the one favoured by professional chauffeurs.

Returning to the hotel, they then followed another option that Mr Paul could have taken, driving along the Seine embankment as he did on August 31, 1997, but taking a slip road just before the Alma tunnel. Finally, they drove the route that Mr Paul may have had in mind, through the Alma tunnel. All three routes took much the same time yesterday, but Parisian traffic is highly unpredictable.

A plan to drive the jury to Mr Paul’s flat, close to the hotel, and to point out some of the bars where he was a regular, was abandoned. Court officials said that the street was too narrow to take the coach.

“I hope you haven’t found the trip too inconvenient,” the coroner said as he dismissed the jury, instructing them to reappear in the rather less exciting surroundings of Court 73 today.

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