Tracing a man, tracing a Picture

I am researching a miniature portrait ca. 1797 (mother and child) done in Edinburgh, the lady having a connection to South Carolina - but also to an Australian descendent and beyond. A book published in Melbourne in 1978 carries a photograph of a portrait of man, the lady’s husband, recording this portrait in the possession of the late John Grigg who died in 2001 and whose papers sold by Quaritch in 2002 are at the Bodleian and also at the collection in Sydney that I am going to study in October. The ODNB entry for Grigg gives, surprisingly, his last address in Blackheath So I write to the author of the book (a Professor in Canberra, apparently still active there) to ask if he remembers the picture and his research at that time. Subsidiarily I also dropped an e:mail to my friend Neil Rhind who lives in Blackheath and publishes on local history (and master-minded my election as a Fellow of the Antiquaries in 2012) in case he might know the widow and gain me an entrée. So I received overnight a response from the Australian Professor - that as it happens he is on a visit to London and the portrait I am asking about is hanging on the stairs below ... he being an old friend of Patsy Grigg and the family. I reported this to Neil Rhind - who eventually replied to say that they know Patsy very well and he would drop her a postcard to tell her I am a good chap to be let in to see the picture *** My understanding of this sort of thing is that the sheer emphasis of my enquiry - the pursuit - generates the bringing together of the circumstances. I know exactly what I am looking for and am prepared to follow all the correct leads and am touching all the right keys. The fact that the entry in ODNB gives the address of the owner of the picture is unusual in these days of 'data protection'. I ought not to have known of the 'Blackheath' location but knowing that I could expect to track the thing down by my friend Neil Rhind (himself a researcher in just my kind) resident of Blackheath and (obviously) known to everybody in the Parish. The wonderment is reserved for the fact that the Australian Professor is making a visit to the home where the picture is - which he himself first saw when writing his book some thirty-five years ago, and the resolution is that the picture has been in situ for an eternity awaiting my enquiry. It is serendipity at the zenith