WAS Diana murdered? Or were she and Dodi simply victims of a dreadful road accident?

The tortuous, much-criticised French investigation into their deaths in a car crash in a Paris underpass last August is charged with the daunting task of answering those questions with certainty.

Yet, can it ever?

For though many inconsistencies mark witness accounts, as they usually do, the prime evidence suggests that drink and speed will be blamed for the crash.

But even if the fullest-possible substantiation of this is delivered by the investigation, it is unlikely that the conspiracy theories pointing to murder will ever go away.

One has only to look back to the 1963 assassination of US president John F Kennedy to see how endless and insatiable - and, arguably, futile - the process can become.

With Diana, the most famous and possibly most-loved woman in the world, her tragic death on the eve of her apparently achieving elusive happiness after the ruin of a fairy-tale marriage is an event that cannot be laid to rest - not just because of the unanswered questions that surround it, but because of the endless opportunities it provides for repeating the questions for gain. As long as there is a newspaper or magazine article to be inspired by it, a book to be published or a film or TV programme to be based on it, then the flow and reciprocation of conspiracy theories will continue.

Last night's ITV documentary raised new questions and repeated earlier ones - what happened to the mysterious white Fiat Uno said to be in the underpass at the same time, why was there carbon monoxide as well as drunkenness-levels of alcohol in the chauffeur's blood and what of the claims that a blinding flash occurred just before the crash?

But the programme was typical of how the specious quest for the truth can become an exercise in itself and one that simply serves the public's morbid curiosity.

And, alas, for Diana's children it will be a painful and ultimately fruitless process they will have to suffer all their lives.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.