Glenys Thornbury

Glenys Thornbury is 31 and earns her living moving words from one side to the other. Born in Kent, the daughter of a bank clerk and a French teacher, she grew up with dictionaries in place of toys. She studied languages in London, spent a year in Rome and came back fluent in Italian, with an accent people find charming and she finds slightly out of place.

She works for a translation agency in Kensington, in a two-floor office with typewriters, shelves of dictionaries and a tea trolley that rolled from room to room at four. She lives in EalingEaling Residential suburb in west London., in a small flat, and goes to work by bus with a novel under her arm. She corrects the punctuation on menus she reads, takes ten minutes for lunch and is never late for anything.

She is thin, with light red hair at shoulder length with bangs, freckles and attentive green eyes. She wears a white blouse with a bow at the neck, a navy pleated skirt and a gray cardigan, and always carries a shorthandshorthand System of quick symbols and abbreviations for writing down speech as fast as it is spoken. pad with a well-sharpened pencil. She speaks precisely, politely, and corrects other people's English without meaning to, apologizing right afterward.

She was hired on Tuesday through an agency to translate the banker's letters and phone calls and to handle the household's papers. She earned fifteen pounds a day and says he didn't speak a word of English. She left the flat at 11:45 p.m., on the night bus to EalingEaling Residential suburb in west London., and recalls the man was still standing by the window, looking at the river, and said: grazie, signorina, and closed the door. Of what he confided in her, she says she only translated.

Glenys knows whoever translates everything and opines on nothing ends up looking like an accomplice to all. It could be the discretion of a professional who knows her place. It could be someone who chooses each word the way one chooses what to leave out. The detective will have to decide which.