Alexander De Jager, aged nine, was found dead after police forced entry to his family home on Mayfield Road in Belvedere in the London borough of Bexley on 9 March. Officers were responding to welfare concerns raised in a call received at 11.15am.

The body of his brother Maximus, seven, was also found along with that of their mother Nadia De Jager, 47.

Police are awaiting the results of postmortem examinations to establish the cause of death but detectives said they were not seeking anyone else in relation to the investigation.

Newspaper reports claimed the two children were strangled or suffocated by their mother in a ‘murder-suicide’.