DIANA'S WHODUNIT PAYS OFF.

Byline: Joseph Honig

THERE is money in tales from the crypt.

Stories of puzzling deaths, mysterious ends and forensic riddles that keep dime-store detectives permanently amused.

It's been going on since scientists first argued about exactly what killed King Tut. And how Marilyn Monroe left this Earth.

Not to mention the multimillion-dollar industry created after President John F. Kennedy's assassination.

Now it is Diana Spencer Windsor's turn. As in Princess Diana. As in alluring royal rock star whose death gave the world something to cry about. And wonder about.

It wasn't so much grief as diversion.

For in the half-dozen years since her car crashed in Paris, perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars have changed hands in the Diana business: The books. The films. The memorabilia. The postage stamps and souvenirs. Will we ever tire?

Apparently not.

For why trust the official version of events when, every few years, some hazy, ``grassy knoll'' theory of Diana's death sells papers and fuels news broadcasts? Outsize tragedy often never goes away, and Britain's bombshell princess is back in play. The headlines are dead solid crazy. This is Elvis land.

According to investigators, the princess's chauffeur was simply drunk as a lord. Almost passing-out drunk, police reports indicated. But Diana was a gorgeous and splashy woman - a playful, divorced superstar of a royal - and it was just too much to ask that she be allowed to rest in peace.

So the games began.

Did her former in-laws, the world's most celebrated welfare family, have her done in? Did the queen recoil at the thought of Diana marrying the Egyptian playboy who died alongside her? The playboy's father has been fanning such suspicions for years. He's done so without a scintilla of evidence. He never quits. After all, he owns a department store, Harrods, the Bloomingdales of Britain.

And you don't make the news columns with white sales. You can't avenge a son's death with specials on bone china. You've got to have something bigger.

Then came the lovers, aristocrats, maybe cash-strapped and trying to keep musty mansions in firewood. There were tell-all books and interviews. Money changed hands. In some accounts, Diana was a bulimic, abused, adulterous and disturbed woman. It was all gobbled up like so much movie popcorn.

She amused us in life. She captivates us in death. Maybe someday there will be an opera. Perhaps Andrew Lloyd Webber will dive in. You never know.

Enter the butler, Paul Burrell, self-appointed flame-keeper who narrowly avoided prosecution for stealing his mistress's property. (Some London smart money said Queen Elizabeth helped fix the case to buy Burrell's silence on other palace scandals.)

His new book claims Diana wondered about dying in an auto accident - and suggests she identified individuals who meant her deliberate harm. He claims proof in letters from the princess. He's spilled to Barbara Walters.

Enriched beyond a simple servant's dreams, he no longer lives with the rest of the help.

Thus the butler has broken new ground in the crazy realm of conspiracy theories. He's pinned his tale on the purported ruminations of a flighty woman who maybe had a dream. Or maybe didn't. To give his story legs, he's volunteered to assist in any new investigations, saying he'll identify Diana's alleged nemesis to authorities.

Scotland Yard has yet to dispatch a Flying Squad.

French and British police are sticking to their conclusion: Diana was killed by a deadly combination of drink and speed in an unforgiving Paris tunnel. This was no royal retaliation. No Henry VIII story here.

Business, though, is business. The butler might take his cash and retire to the south of France, maybe bumping up against some of his social betters. The movie-of-the-week people could get busy once again. Director Oliver Stone may see big-screen possibilities.

In lush and verdant England, there are a lot of grassy knolls.