David Whitely was estate manager at Tye House, when it was owned by Henry Trace. Some time after the events of The Killings at Badger's Drift, Mr. Trace sold the lodge house and some land to David Whitely.
In Death's Shadow, David Whitely was murdered by Stephen Wentworth, when he set fire to the trailer that David was living in. The reason why is because during his childhood, he and some school boys he grew up with played a prank initiation on a kid named Felix, who was Stephen's illegetimate son, by standing him up on a chair with a noose around his neck as they hid off for minutes, only to come back to find that he suffocated to death and thus covered it up to look like a suicide.