The royal secret that never was: Diana's inquest descends into farce as Fayed QC grills Burrell

After an anxious 24 hours, Paul Burrell came hotfoot back to court yesterday to face the one question which continued to perplex the inquest into Princess Diana's death: What exactly was the big secret the two of them shared, the one the former royal butler swore he would never reveal?

At last, it seemed, we might be about to learn the truth. The papers and jottings he recovered from his home in Cheshire might just reveal the answer.

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Maybe the very letter in which Diana talks about the "important weekend" coming up, and how the tide was changing for her, might just have been among them.

But of course, we should have known better. For the documents Mr Burrell presented to the coroner yesterday after a dramatic midnight dash to retrieve them added precisely nothing to the inquest - except to lend it the distinct flavour of farce.

Like a child disappointed by what should have been a big day out, Mr Burrell whined that his time in the witness box had been "quite horrid . . . disgraceful, actually".

With unmistakable peevishness in his voice, he added that he never expected it to be so ghastly. And it didn't end there.

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Michael Mansfield, QC, relentlessly trying to establish what Diana's so-called confidant did or didn't know, told him his evidence had been "all over the place".

He added: "We really don't know whether we can rely on anything you're saying."

This was how Mr Burrell faced his second day in the witness box yesterday after flying voluntarily from his other home in Florida to take the stand.

It wasn't a great moment for the man Diana called "my rock". Not only was he ordered to make the Cheshire excursion to retrieve the undisclosed papers - he had to cancel his return flight to the U.S. because the evidence took so long to extract.

As one might expect of someone who has spent most of his adult life in royal service, the 49-year-old ex-footman and personal butler was perfectly polite and controlled.

The trace of a northern accent was less discernible than the Florida tan and he kept his hands clasped tightly in front of him.

The suit looked expensive, albeit tailored for someone slightly slimmer.

His gaze seldom strayed from Mr Mansfield, representing Mohamed Al Fayed, and by far the most persistent inquisitor.

So what had he brought from Cheshire? Twenty-four hours earlier, the coroner had ordered him to retrieve every journal, jotting and document and present them to the court.

Now, to a hushed court, Lord Justice Scott Baker read aloud a list of the items.

To wit: An A4 notebook containing notes about the history of servants. A Lavender coloured spiral notebook written after Diana's death. Six (irrelevant) letters from the Princess of Wales. A box of holiday and royal souvenir snapshots.

A book on psychology. And ten A4 pages headed "Leading Men", presumed to be a draft for a section of his book.

The letter in question? It must have been at his home in Florida, Mr Burrell said. Oh well. So much for secrets. The closest we came to learning what the secret might be was that Mr Burrell thought it could have referred to the princess's plan to move to the U.S. Or maybe to South Africa.

Mr Mansfield pressed him on the subject by summarising the evidence Mr Burrell had given so far. "First you say you do know a secret, then you say it could be a number of secrets. Then you say you don't know any. Now you say you do know, but it's two, and actually they are on different timescales."

Mr Burrell: "I'm constantly racking my brains to find the right answer."

Mr Mansfield: "Racking your brains to find out what you should be saying?"

Mr Burrell: "Not what I should be saying. What the truth is."

Later he admitted that a colourful account in his book of the night Diana penned fears for her life was not true.

The so-called Burrell Letter, which has formed the basis of numerous conspiracy theories about Diana's death, reads: "This particular phase in 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 (Legge-Bourke)."

In a vivid page-long passage Burrell the author recalls sitting on the stairs talking to Diana about attempts by Charles's sympathisers "to destroy me", as she put it.

He claims he watched her "scribble furiously" at her desk before handing the note to him in a sealed envelope.

But Mr Burrell told the court yesterday he had simply found it waiting for him the next morning on his desk in the pantry at Kensington Palace.

Asked about the dramatic difference between the two accounts he said: "I really cannot explain that."

He admitted there were "bound to be" errors in his book, which he wrote as a historical document to try to preserve the princess's memory.

Mr Burrell was also surprised to learn that his book contains the now famous statement that the Queen warned him there were "dark forces" at work in Britain.

"Does it say dark forces," he asked. "Well that's an error. the Queen never mentioned dark forces."

And after an exchange over a supposed former intelligence officer Diana had known, Mr Mansfield cryptically asked him to do some overnight research before resuming his evidence.

"If you just check the book, you'll see something different on the topic of the person she was getting information from," Mr Mansfield said. "It's in the book."

"My book?" Mr Burrell asked. "Yes," said Mr Mansfield. "Oh," said Mr Burrell.