Friend: Diana didn't plan to marry Fayed

LONDON, Dec. 17 (UPI) -- England's Princess Diana, shortly before her death in a 1997 Paris car accident, told a friend she wasn't planning to marry Dodi Fayed.

Engagement rumors were rife before Diana's death, and her friend, Annabel Goldsmith, asked her point-blank if something was up, the Times of London said.

"It had been splashed all over the papers. I said to her laughably, 'you are not going to do anything silly are you?'" Goldsmith told officials at an inquest into Diana's death. "I meant, you are not going to do anything silly like rushing off and eloping or getting married and she said 'I would need marriage like a rash on my face.' It was a very Diana expression.

"I took it to mean that she was not serious about marriage to Dodi."

Mohamed al Fayed, Dodi Fayed's father and the owner of Harrods, insists that the couple were killed because Diana was pregnant and she and Dodi Fayed were planning to marry, the Times of London said.

The inquest is required by British law when someone dies unexpectedly, violently or of unknown causes, but it was delayed 10 years while French and British police conducted exhaustive investigations that concluded driver Henri Paul was drunk and the deaths were accidental, MSNBC said.