THE INTERNATIONAL SET: Death on a Curve

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Worst Blow. When the Aga Khan died in 1957, he named Aly's Harvard-educated son Karim, 23, as head of the Ismaili sect. Close friends say that Aly was crushed at being passed over, that it was "the worst blow he had received since his mother died." It seemed to effect a change in Aly's behavior: he soon appeared at the United Nations as the Ambassador of Pakistan, where thousands of Ismailis live. Canada's U.N. Ambassador

Charles Ritchie found it "extraordinary" how quickly Aly took hold, and "how conscientious he was about his job." But the job still left him time to check up on his ten stud farms and stables in France and Ireland, and for visits to his Paris mansion in the Bois de Boulogne, his manor house outside Dublin, his Riviera chateau and his villas in Normandy and Switzerland. His constant companion was a slim, tawny-haired French model known professionally as Bettina.

One evening last week Aly picked up Bettina in his new Lancia and headed for a country house in the Parisian suburb of Ville d'Avray, where they were expected for dinner. He waved the chauffeur to the rear and took the wheel.

As he rounded a gentle curve near St. Cloud race track, where his thoroughbreds had often been led to the winner's circle, a small, beat-up Simca came around the bend on the wrong side of the road. The collision flung Aly forward, and he was killed almost instantly by a broken neck (Bettina and the chauffeur were unhurt). Aly died as he would probably have wanted to: at the wheel of a low-slung car with a beautiful woman beside him.