A handwritten letter in which Diana, Princess of Wales, claimed that her husband was planning to kill her was revealed in full for the first time yesterday at the inquest into her death.

Written by the Princess in October 1996, she told of her belief that the Prince of Wales wanted her dead so he could marry Tiggy Legge-Bourke, a nanny to Princes William and Harry.

The Princess, who mistakenly believed that Miss Legge-Bourke was having an affair with Prince Charles and had been made pregnant by him, wrote that Camilla Parker Bowles was “nothing but a decoy”.

She gave the letter to her butler Paul Burrell, who revealed its existence in a book in 2003. In it, the Princess wrote: “This particular phase of my life is the most dangerous — my husband is planning ‘an accident’ in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry Tiggy.”

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However, a friend of the Princess, Lucia Flecha da Lima, told the inquest that she believed Paul Burrell was perfectly capable of imitating Princess Diana’s handwriting.

The inquest was also told yesterday that half-empty contraceptive packets were seen among the Princess’s belongings in the weeks before she died.

Several of the Princess’s close friends have already told the inquest in London that there was no chance that she was pregnant when she died in August, 1997. Deborah Gribble, a senior stewardess on the al-Fayed family’s yacht the Jonikal, said yesterday that she saw the contraceptives while housekeeping on two of the three cruises the Princess took with boyfriend Dodi Fayed.

She agreed it was “apparent” that the Princess and Mr Fayed were sleeping together. Ms Gribble added that there had been an uncomfortable atmosphere between the couple on the final cruise. The hearing continues today.

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