The death of two best friends in an apparent suicide pact has left the small Border community of Emyvale, Co Monaghan, shocked and baffled.
On Sunday evening Darren Lavery (22) and Jonathan McKenna (21) had been socialising locally in McMahon's bar in the town.
Yesterday afternoon, less than 24 hours later, two hearses were parked outside the pub, which is also the local undertakers, waiting to collect the bodies of both men to bring them to Cavan General Hospital for a postmortem.
Yesterday detectives from Monaghan Garda station were trying to piece together the movements of both men. With no suicide note at the scene, they spoke to friends and family to establish if either man had given any indication of the pact.
Darren Lavery, from Anagha, just north of the town, was the second-youngest of six brothers and sisters. His brother runs a well-known photography business from the family home.
The death of Jonathan McKenna is the second tragedy to hit his family in less than a decade.
He was orphaned in the mid-1990s when his parents were killed in a car accident locally. He and his two sisters were reared by his aunt at Lenagh, also in Emyvale.
The alarm was raised shortly before 3 a.m. yesterday when gardaí were called to the Lavery house at Anagha, on the main Dublin-Derry road, by a member of the family.
Shortly before that, two shots had been heard from a small snooker room in the back of the house, where the bodies of both men were found.
A legally held shotgun was found at the scene.
The two men started off their Sunday evening at the local pub. As he was driving, Jonathan McKenna was drinking Lucozade. The two moved on with friends to Monaghan town, seven miles away, where they met up with other friends, including Mr Lavery's girlfriend at An Puc Fada, a popular bar in the town.
They then returned to Emyvale where they went to the snooker room of Darren Lavery's house where they began drinking. Both are believed to have made a number of telephone calls to friends and family at various stages during the night.
Yesterday the Garda forensics bureau carried out a detailed examination of the scene, and the Assistant State Pathologist, Dr Michael Curtis, carried out a preliminary examination of the bodies at the scene before they were transferred to Cavan for a post-mortem.
Investigating gardaí are relatively satisfied that there appears to have been an agreement between both men.
They described as "off the wall" suggestions that there had been a row before the shots were fired.
There were no indications of any scuffle or shouting beforehand.
It appears from initial investigations that Jonathan McKenna shot his best friend before turning the gun on himself.
Both men worked locally, Mr Lavery for a window firm, and Mr McKenna at a duck and poultry factory in Emyvale.
Local curate Father Cathal Deery, who was called to administer last rights at the scene in the early hours of yesterday morning, said dealing with the aftermath of suicides had become an all too common part of the work of priests.
"All of us as priests have become accustomed to it, but a double tragedy, it's just a very difficult thing, and the Christmas season obviously adds to the sorrow," he said.
His main concern, he said, was to help both families and the community to come to terms with the tragedy.
"A tragedy like this gives rise to all sorts of questions, and I don't know if a family ever gets over it. People do learn to live with it. They learn to cope, but I don't know whether they get over it." Local Monaghan Hospital action TD, Mr Paudge Connolly, who spent 30 years as a psychiatric nurse, said the psychiatric services in the region were extremely good and forward-thinking, but they had not made any impact on the suicide rate in Cavan or Monaghan.
"The World Health Organisation is adopting them as a model of best practice," he said.
"The rate of admissions to psychiatric hospital has been dramatically reduced, but I've seen no evidence it has reduced the suicide rate."