For a man attending the inquests into the death of his beloved son and his son's girlfriend, Mohammed al Fayed was anything but mournful. Accompanied by a phalanx of lawyers and p.r. flacks, the Egyptian-born billionaire emerged last Tuesday morning from an inquest session in London with an unmistakable air of triumph. And no wonder: the coroner, Michael Burgess, had just announced that he had asked Scotland Yard to help investigate the August 1997 deaths of Dodi Fayed and Diana, Princess of Wales. After identical proceedings in Reigate, 30 km south of London, al Fayed Senior — who owns the iconic London store Harrods and Fulham Football Club but has long felt shut out by the British establishment — gave the media pack his personal, oft-repeated verdict. "I suspect not only Prince Charles but Prince Philip, who is a racist," he announced. "It is absolutely black-and-white, horrendous murder." With that, the tycoon eased into a dark red Mercedes, looking altogether self-satisfied.

Nearly six-and-a-half years after that fatal car crash in a Paris tunnel, al Fayed finally had an entire nation (and a sizable chunk of the world) paying attention to his claim that Diana and Dodi had been murdered by British agents. Until now, it was mostly Diana worshipers and some paranoid Arab commentators who bought the conspiracy story; after all, al Fayed had provided not a jot of proof for his claim. But by calling in the police, Burgess had — wittingly or not — fired the imaginations of people around the world who suspect royal skulduggery. ("They have to investigate," says Sayed Ragab, a Cairo bookstore worker, "because there was surely foul play.") And if more fuel were needed, the U.K.'s Daily Mirror had supplied it that very morning: the tabloid revealed that in a letter written to her butler, Paul Burrell, 10 months before her death, Diana expressed the fear that she might be murdered in a car crash arranged by her ex-husband Charles, heir to the British throne.

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nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu) And al Fayed's claim got another boost at week's end: the London Times reported that French investigators into the crash failed to conduct dna tests to confirm that a crucial blood sample, showing Diana's driver Henri Paul was drunk at the time of the crash, did indeed belong to Paul. The billionaire would no doubt take special pleasure in other reports that Charles and British intelligence agencies will face police questioning.

Coroners are sober folks, representatives of one of the oldest and most independent arms of the arcane English judicial system. They usually work in dusty rooms at the back of courthouses, establishing the cause of unexpected deaths. Few ever find themselves in the glare of the world's TV cameras. But Burgess might as well get used to it. A gray-haired, bespectacled lawyer, he is a pivotal figure in the latest chapter of the Diana saga. Not only is he Britain's royal coroner, in which capacity he is looking into Diana's death, but he is also coroner for the county of Surrey, where Dodi is buried, and is thus responsible for finding out his cause of death as well. (The conspiracy theorists may decide that this can't be mere coincidence.) The two inquests were opened separately Tuesday, but may eventually be held jointly since the two people died in the same crash.