Diana's fears revealed

PRINCESS DIANA told her solicitor that she believed the Queen planned to abdicate to make way for Charles, her inquest was told yesterday.

She feared that both she and Camilla Parker Bowles would be 'put aside' to allow the prince to marry his sons' nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke. 'Reliable sources' had informed her of the plan. The astonishing allegation was recorded by Lord Mishcon in a tense private meeting with Diana in October 1995. He kept it secret until after the Paris crash in which she died almost two years later.

His note of the meeting was read to the six women and five men who yesterday began the task of deciding how the princess and her lover Dodi Fayed died. Lord Mishcon, who died aged 90 last year after a long illness, wrote that 'HRH' told him 'the Queen would be abdicating in April and the Prince of Wales would then assume the throne'.

The existence of the note, and Diana's fears that the 'authorities' would 'get rid of her' in a car accident, emerged last December when former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Stevens published his report which concluded that the princess was killed in a tragic road accident in a car driven by a drunk.

But the abdication claim has never before been made public. Lord Mishcon, who admitted he could 'not believe what I was hearing', added that Diana 'was convinced that there was a conspiracy that she and Camilla would be put aside'.

Diana also told him that Miss Legge-Bourke had undergone an abortion and that she would obtain a medical certificate to prove it. She said the ideal solution would be for Charles to abdicate, and allow William to become King.

The amazing revelation came on a stormy first day of inquest in which the coroner, Lord Justice Scott Baker, set about demolishing many of the conspiracy theories from Dodi's father Mohamed Al Fayed. The Harrods owner is adamant that Diana and Dodi were murdered on the orders of the Royal Family and the princess was expecting his son's baby.

But the coroner told the jury she could not have been pregnant by Dodi when she died. He said that it would have been impossible because the two of them were not even in a relationship when the rumour emerged.