A father is believed to have killed his former partner and their four-month-old daughter before committing suicide at their flat in Bow in east London.
It is understood 29-year-old woman, who has not been officially identified by police, came from Blackrock, Co Dublin. One shocked neighbour yesterday suggested the dead woman had been keen to return home to Ireland.
Her body, along with that of her daughter and former partner - variously reported yesterday as a 49-year-old Nigerian or Algerian - lay undiscovered for a week before police, acting on a call from social services, found them in the ground floor council flat in Birchdown House, Devons Road, Bow, at about 4.45pm on Monday.
Scotland Yard maintained an open mind on the cause of the three deaths last night but indicated they were treating it as a "domestic" incident and were not seeking anyone else in connection with their inquiry.
While police would only describe the deaths as suspicious, the assumption was of murder and then suicide.
Although police refused to disclose details, it was reported that they found the dead woman with stab wounds. There were apparently no obvious injuries to the man or the baby.
Postmortems into the deaths of the mother, known as Margaret to neighbours, and her baby will be held later today, after which police will also release the results of the postmortem on the dead man, which was conducted yesterday.
The police investigation is being handled by a murder team from the Met's child abuse investigations command.
Neighbour Amanda Gunnell said she knew the dead woman only as "Maggie", and that she had lived in the temporary accommodation for about six months. She described her as "a doting mother" but recalled frequent arguments between her and her partner.
"He was a lot older than her and they didn't live together all the time," she said. "They were always having arguments. Sometimes if they were walking down the road he would be shouting and she would try to shrug it off, like she was embarrassed to be having an argument in the street."
In the quiet streets around Birchdown House, other neighbours spoke quietly about the "pleasant Irish woman" and her seemingly "strange" partner. Kamal Uddin, who has lived on the third floor for over 15 years, said the dead man "would never speak", wore "a cowboy hat" and "always kept his head down". Mr Uddin said "he looked as if he might have mental problems. And when they were in the street together he would go off in the opposite direction and they never spoke in the way people do."
Bromley-By-Bow councillor Mohamed Munim, who said he lives on the same estate, said he thought the woman and baby had moved into Birchdown House five to eight weeks ago. "She said she had been homeless. She wanted to be rehoused somewhere else as soon as possible."
Mr Munim said that although he had seen a man at the flat as well, he was unsure if he lived there permanently.