WHO SHARES THE BLAME?

Princess Diana's death was one of those large events that happen in an instant, like the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, leaving everyone to grope for some explanation of how a whole world of certainties can be undone so quickly. Everywhere that Diana's name is known, which is most places, people are trying to comprehend the events that led to her death and wishing they could reach back somehow to change them--to fend off the paparazzi, maybe to find a different driver for Diana's car, or even just to buckle her seat belt.

So who bears what part of the blame for her death? From the start, the chief suspects have been the paparazzi. Nine photographers and one photo-agency motorcycle driver were arrested and released last week. Police say others who fled the crash are still at large. When French prosecutors complete their investigation, they will decide whether to charge some or all of them with involuntary manslaughter and failure to provide aid at the scene of an accident. Mohammed al Fayed, Dodi's father, the parents of Henri Paul, the Fayed security man who was driving that night and died in the crash, and the Spencers, Diana's kin, have all taken steps to become civil parties to the French investigation.

But each of the photographers has his own story to tell. One of them, Jacques Langevin, a highly respected war photographer who works for the Sygma agency, says he never followed the car but took pictures outside the hotel, then headed off to a dinner party only to come upon the crash scene while driving across town. Nikola Arsov of Sipa, another agency, says he also came upon the accident scene by chance after following the decoy cars sent out by the hotel. "I took five or six photos, but I forgot to turn on the flash and they didn't come out," he says. The photographers who admit to chasing the car claim they were hundreds of yards behind when it crashed.

That picture is contradicted, however, by a man who told French police that at the tunnel entrance he saw the black Mercedes surrounded by motorcycles, one of which appeared to cut it off just before the crash. The witness, Francois Levi, who was driving with his family that night, says he entered the tunnel two cars ahead of Diana and Dodi. "When the motorcycle cut in front of [Diana's car]," he says, "I saw a large white flash."

Judicial sources told TIME they are examining what appears to be a fragment of the sedan's side mirror. It was found at the scene a considerable distance behind the wreckage, which suggests that the car might have made hard contact with something just before it spun out of control. Investigators wonder if that something was the handlebar of a paparazzo's motorcycle. All the same, insists Goksin Sipahiouglu, head of the Sipa photo agency, it would have been pointless for the photographers to catch the Mercedes or pull alongside it to take pictures. "A moving photo of a car with tinted windows would have no value at all," he says.